Scavengers
by T'Pring
Summary: This is what happens when you let whumpers request a plot: John Sheppard is kidnapped, shot, forced to aid hostile aliens in their campaign to steal Ancient technology...and he doesn't even have to step foot off Atlantis to do it. John's really bad day.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: This fic came about as the result of an evening of chatting (and drinking) with some awesome cool GW whumpers at the Chicago SG convention last month. As a frequent whump writer I was given the task of writing a story that included these prompts: Kidnapping, drippy blood, restraints, John's ATA gene in a key role, and John to 'really go off the deep end'. Despite the odd combination, I think I've squeezed everything in in some fashion or other. I'm rather fond of my little plot in fact. Although this contains a fair amount of my usual action and technobabble plotting, it is definitely written with a specific audience in mind. So fair warning, and to all whumpers: enjoy! _

_Story is complete, I'll be dropping chapters as I edit to be posted to completion by the end of next week, if not sooner._

* * *

John skulked down the hall, trying not to look like he was skulking. He'd managed to avoid Rodney for the whole day, so far, but the tenacious busybody had gotten the word out and the entire science department was on the lookout for him, too. John had had to threaten Zelenka with a week's worth of jumper repairs to keep him from squealing only an hour ago.

He supposed he should be impressed that they hadn't taken the city's scanners to him, but John was too grumpy at losing the bet to feel particularly appreciative of the questionable courtesy. He flinched when someone entered the hallway from one of the many doors lined the corridor, then relaxed when Lt. Ziegenhorn passed on by. John refrained from turning to watch him go…just to make sure he wasn't darting back into another lab to rat him out. So now he was getting paranoid in addition to feeling grumpy?

"Just pay up and be done with it. Don't give him the satisfaction of seeing you sweat it," he muttered to himself, reasonably. _But __it's an original, Mark Bagley, 2000, Ultimate Spiderman #1__,_ he continued within the privacy of his own mind, not quite ready to be reasonable. _Rodney has no appreciation for it. He'll READ it or something! Bend the pages. Drool on it, maybe…_

"Sheppard!"

John didn't even blink. He pivoted neatly on his heel and headed back the way he'd come before the echoes of Rodney's bellow had died.

"Hey! It's time to pay up and you know it! I beat you to the cache." John walked faster and Rodney's voice went even more cocky. "I found it, I can find you. You can run, but you can't hide."

Good idea, actually. John ran. He smirked at the sound of Rodney sputtering in disbelief.

"Oh, real mature, Sheppard," Rodney called, but he didn't sound quite so smug while loping down the hall in an unwilling lumber. "I…won. Fair…and square. Just… pay…up…and…"

John skidded to a halt in front of the transporter and slapped at the control bar. The doors slid slowly open – at least it seemed slow –and he leaped inside. He leaned back for one last glower at the by-now huffing and puffing McKay, then shoved his finger into the dot on the large, beautiful map of the city that would tell the transporter to take him to the control tower. Even if Rodney caught up with him there, John was sure he could find some tasks to become "involved" in. He couldn't hide _forever_, but he could give it the ol' college try and at least make Rodney work for it.

"Shep -!" was the last thing he heard before the room flashed and the furious voice on the other side of the door ceased abruptly.

From John's perspective, the transporter usually felt like he stayed in one place and it was the city that had shifted around him. One transporter cubby was pretty much the same as another.

So when the flash faded and John found himself staring at a cluttered laboratory wall instead of a transporter map, he was rather taken aback. He staggered a step at the surge of disorientation, then whirled when he heard his name spoken in a soft gasp.

"Colonel _Sheppard_…?"

Two blue-shirted scientist types were standing in the center of the room, a few steps away, staring at him as if he'd sprouted a second head.

John flicked a quick look around the very messy, cluttered almost to the point of trashed, room. He was pretty sure he was in a lab, but not one he'd set foot in recently, if ever. There was a low, circular platform under his feet, and a glance at the ceiling confirmed that he was standing under a transporter ceiling panel – although the one hanging sloppily over his head was crude. Exposed wires dangled and looped through the half assembled frame. He rolled his eyes and broke into a grudging grin.

"Oh, I get it. Nicely done." The two blue-shirts looked at each other, then looked back at him, still gaping. John hopped off the platform. "So did you come up with this all on your own or did Rodney put you up to it." He stepped back to give the homemade transporter a onceover. "I have to admit, that's pretty cool. If you guys get good at building these things, we could sure use a couple more over on the West pier and in the residential towers. So, how did you know it was me? You got this thing hooked into the transponder database?"

He caught yet another shocked look pass between the two men and a small bell of alarm finally went off. John was used to cold silences and/or deferential fear directed at him by members of the science team. Lt. Col. John Sheppard, military commander of Atlantis, was generally classified in one of two categories: Mindless grunt or Gun-happy vigilante.

But something other than unfair stereotyping was bugging these two, especially if they'd been expecting him, he realized. Another, more _serious_, survey of the scientists only deepened his unease. The two men were as disheveled as the room. Their shirts were wrinkled and stained, their hair was unwashed and unkempt. They looked vaguely familiar, but John didn't always get a chance to meet every lab rat beyond their security dossiers.

Both were on the short side, 5'8" and 5'11" respectively. The slightly taller man was mid forties, dark skin and hair and sharp features that John categorized generally as Indian or Pakistani. The shorter was also younger, late twenties, Caucasian with long thick curly hair that was partially pulled into a short pony tail. Wild tendrils had escaped the clasp and frizzed around the young man's face in wispy halo.

They both stared at him through eyes that were a little too wide, and a little too…surprised.

"So…what's going on?" he said into the silence that had quickly grown awkward.

He got no answer. The two just turned their backs on him and began to hiss in frantic, whispered conversation. John cocked his head, torn between moving closer to hear and bolting for the door like a scared rabbit. They were creeping him out. Beyond the regular weird science guy _thing, _even. He felt his hand drift to his hip. Snippets of words drifted to him.

"Not _him?_"

"…strongest…"

"…too dangerous…"

"…no choice!"

John abruptly decided he'd had enough of the joke and turned towards the door that was half hidden behind a cluttered metal shelving unit. "I'll be sure to tell Rodney you caught me," he announced. "See you guys later."

"Wait!" Curly raised both his hands, and took a step as if to block John.

John's hand gripped the handle of his gun at the sudden sharpness of the command, but he didn't draw it out…yet. He was moving past puzzled and well into annoyed.

"No you wait. Rodney doesn't like it when people start messing around with things without telling him." He waved at the hodge-podge transporter. "I want to know why I ended up here. You can tell me what's going on or I'm out of here."

"You have a strong natural occurrence of the genetic code required to initialize the indigenous technology. We require your…assistance," the dark featured man said. He looked a little like he was going for polite and persuasive, but was fidgeting and sweating too much to pull it off.

"There's procedure for that, guys. You ask Rodney, Rodney asks me, I say no. What's really going on?" He allowed a snap of frustration into his voice. Somehow, hijacking someone out of the transporter didn't seem like a normal way to ask for help. And there were lots of people who could turn ATA stuff on. Other people.

"We do not answer to Dr. McKay. You will comply." The curly haired man made no pretense at courtesy. His tone was sharp and aggressive and John finally lumped the body language into the proper category: nervous aggression. His posture went defensive.

"I don't think so." He turned to walk past Curly, hoping he could just bluff his way out of the room. These guys didn't have any weapons that he could see, but he thought they just might be wound up enough to throw a punch so he kept his chest to the room, sidling sideways to avoid turning his back. He eyed the two men as they bent their heads in whispered conversation one more time. John had almost made it to the shelf when Curly turned his back on his partner and jammed a hand in his wrinkled jacket pocket.

John jerked his gun out of the holster at the sudden movement. This was getting ridiculous. He really needed some backup here. Just so he didn't feel like he was the only one freaking out about two crazy guys who really needed a shower.

"Don't," he warned. "Keep your hands where I can see them."

Curly pulled it out slowly, bringing with it some kind of green crystal. John had been around the Pegasus Galaxy long enough to take nothing, not even a pretty piece of rock, for granted. "Drop it!"

John leveled his own weapon and was reaching for his radio earpiece to tap open the frequency when Curly closed his fist around the crystal and…John fell out of his body.

It was the only way he could describe the sensation. He was looking through his eyes, thinking in his own head, but his body was completely cut off from his consciousness. He could see it in his peripheral vision, but the part that was _him_ felt like a pair of floating eyeballs.

"See! He is too dangerous to use." Curly turned on his companion and gestured wildly at the gun-toting, immobilized John. "He cannot be simply intimidated as we planned. We must discard him and find another."

The words floated into his mind as if he were hearing them, but he couldn't hear, exactly. He must be connected to his body at least a little. Not enough though. He struggled to move something, anything, then got distracted as the hand holding his gun lowered, then began to turn. Curly was glaring at him as his partner gesticulated.

"But he must have the strongest natural occurrence; that was how we programmed the hijack device. If we are to synthesize the genetic code that allows access to the technology, then we need to synthesize the best possible sample."

"Then get the sample and discard him."

John really did not like the curly guy at all. The gun was pointing at his belly now. _How the hell was it doing that?!_ He thought even harder but it was like screaming at a TV. The show just kept unfolding.

"There is evidence that a mind-link is also required. He has experience with the technology. If we work quickly, we can get much use out of him before his absence is noticed, despite his status."

John could see his chest heaving around deep breaths but it was strange not to feel himself breathing. Some subconscious part of him must be processing the threat because he could see his hands shaking and his chest working. Dammit, he _looked_ scared, even to himself. And that pissed him off. His body twitched slightly with the surge of anger.

Curly looked over at him in surprise at the motion and the gun's muzzle snapped up to press against John's sternum, only skin and bone away from his heart. John's hands were backwards around the grip and his thumb was against the trigger. He was still disconnected – his hands looked like one of those first person shooter games he played on Rodney's computers without permission – but the gun about to go off was really aimed at him. And he had no control over it.

"It's not worth the risk. His death will distract the others for some time." Curly's eyes met his, panicky and calculating. The dark skinned man shrugged in frustration and looked away.

_Crap! _John's body twitched again. Curly's eyes widened, then narrowed in resolve. John saw the moment when Curly gave the mental command that his body would obey.

_No!_

The cry, still tinged with anger, reverberated in his mind and he saw his hands jerk in instinctive self-defense. He heard the crack of the weapon as it discharged its deadly projectile into his side and saw the two scientists jump in guilty reaction. His body curled into the impact that he couldn't feel, then crumpled to the floor. His floating point of view fell with it and he found himself looking at his arms, knees and feet twisted in a pile against bronze decking.

There was a long moment of nothing. John just stared in shock at the puddle of blood that was spreading slowly over the floor. _This is __really __just not my day. _He heard the men speaking again, but he was distracted by the sight of his motionless body.

"The weapon did not kill him!" the dark skinned man – John decided suddenly to call him Mo – was saying when he walked into view and crouched to peer into John's face. His expression was surprised and a little bit pleased. He tugged John's radio and the gun away. Curly also crouched into view and John suddenly felt like a wounded stray dog being messed with by two mean kids. He couldn't move, he couldn't get away. The fear had sunk into his mind, even without his body's feedback to signal it.

"Dr. Strai has great respect for the Colonel," Mo said, more determined. Curly didn't look quite so haughty anymore. In fact, he looked at bit ill and was swallowing a lot at the sight of the ever-widening puddle of blood on the floor. Mo went on, "He is very clever and capable of manipulating most of the indigenous technology, despite his occupation in the warrior class."

"He is very dangerous," Curly snapped back with the hysterical air of one getting tired of repeating himself. "He will fight us." _  
_

_Damn right I will_, John thought.

"But he is wounded and weakened. We have the Cohall device to keep him under control. He can accomplish most of our requirements in that state." Mo nodded to himself, still half crazy to John's eye, but he seemed to have convinced himself of John's usefulness. John couldn't tell if he believed what he was saying or if he was only feeling guilty about shooting him. Mo looked at Curly and pointed at John's face, "And he is the only one who has ever piloted this craft."

Curly looked at his partner with a sharp jerk. "Strai is certain about this?"

"He was onboard at the time. It was a harrowing experience and Strai is convinced only the Colonel could have accomplished the feat from among the current occupants."

John was beginning to find it hard to concentrate. He couldn't feel anything, but his vision was beginning to fade, the image getting dimmer and snowy somehow, like bad reception. He was having trouble thinking through the endless argument between the two insane scientists. They needed him to turn ATA stuff on? They were impressed he'd flown...what? What the hell did any of this have to do with why he was on the floor watching himself bleed out from a self-inflicted gunshot hole in his belly?

It was Curly's turn to look away. And then he lunged to his feet and out of John's view. His voice was barely audible over a faint ringing in John's ears that didn't seem to be coming from the real world. "Fine. Just...fine. We'll use him for as long as we can but he won't last long without treatment from his own medical class - he is losing fluids rapidly."

"I will perform temporary measures."

"His people will begin looking for him soon."

"The Cohall device can alleviate that risk as well. If we use him and our time wisely, the Colonel may work to our great advantage."

Curly's feet paced back and forth in John's view. Mo, having won the argument, became much more calm. John saw him check his pulse and then gingerly begin to tug at his shirts. Once the ragged holes were exposed - and John's hands started to quiver again as his body reacted to his fear of the very-not-good-looking sight - Mo leaned close and spit on John's side.

_Oh that's just disgusting!_

Mo leaned back and waved at Curly. "Help me secure him so we can release him," he said which made no sense at all to John.

His arms were grabbed and his feet were made to walk towards a sturdy lab chair in the corner of the messy room. John's vision greyed even further as he was moved; wispy sparks began to float around, leaving thin, black trails behind. He assumed he was sitting in the chair when his floating pov sank a foot and his knees appeared in his peripheral vision. Curly pulled zip ties off one of the cluttered shelves and fastened his wrists to the armrests. His view jerked as Mo yanked on the cording John watched him loop around his chest. There were thick splotches of blood leading in a trail away back to the large dark puddle of it.

Curly and Mo stood in front of him as if studying their handiwork. Mo nodded with a grim smile. "You can release him."

Before he could even try to figure out what that might mean, John's body snapped back around him – or he snapped back into it. The brief moment of surprise was replaced by agony as the pain of the gunshot wound slammed into him all at once. It wasn't just the wound, there were things crawling around on the wound, inside the wound that felt like tiny needles or teeth eating him from the inside out. John writhed and twisted his wrists against the restraints. His t-shirt under his uniform shirt felt cold and damp from armpit to hip and it stuck to his side with sticky wetness. John squirmed more desperately in the chair; a violent, frustrated scream ripped from his throat and left him panting in exhaustion, lightheaded. And still the pain grew.

"McKay...is...really going...to be pissed...when he finds...you..." he gasped, glaring at the scientists and invoking the most frightening consequence he could think of. "I'm telling...about the...transporter..."

"We have taken every precaution!" Curly snapped, resuming his haughty, nervous tone.

Even Mo didn't seem quite so confident with John back in his body and spoke as if convincing himself again. "We are quite well hidden. No one will know we are here until it is too late to stop us."

"I'll...stop...you..." John gasped, then had to squeeze his eyes shut against a surge of pain. "McKay will find you," he whispered. _McKay will find me and Ronon will blast open the door and Teyla will cut me loose_...

Curly just snorted then John heard footsteps and the creak of another chair. He still had his eyes shut, but the room seemed to be spinning anyway. Mo's voice filtered to him over a whine in his ears that was becoming deafening. "Dr. McKay might penetrate our shielding eventually, but not before we have engaged the star drive and begun our journey home. You will help us."

"No..." His stomach flared in a truly astonishing protest of agony and he groaned, writhing again.

"I think you will," Mo said and John had the strangest thought that he didn't sound menacing or angry or anything like your usual villain-type, monologueing bad guy. He sounded simply...optimistic. John thought again of the stray dog.

John's head spun and he slumped forward against the ropes on his chest. His side was burning and he felt the tell-tale consequences of blood-loss. _What a crappy day_. Curly was slapping furiously at a computer keyboard and John heard Mo walk towards a shelving unit then returned to jab a needle into John's arm. He didn't even flinch, the small prick hardly noticeable compared to the sword in his stomach.

"I will begin preparing the genetic sample. In the meantime, initialize this device, Colonel Sheppard."

"No..." John mumbled, only cracking his eyes open a bit to catch a glimpse of the unfamiliar Ancient doodad Mo was holding out. Mo simply grabbed John's fingers and bent them far enough off the armrest to shove the pearly casing under them. John tried to think "off" or "stop" or something that would keep the thing from coming on, but - like lots of Ancient tech - just a touch was enough. The thing glowed into life.

John sagged further, trying to keep the moan that longed to escape stuck in his throat. He heard his breath catch instead, and thought again, _What a _really _crappy day._

"Now, initialize this device," Mo said, holding yet another gadget.

_And it's only going to get worse..._


	2. Chapter 2

Rodney glared at the empty cubby once the flash faded and the transporter doors slid obediently back open, sensing his presence. It was empty of course.

"He got away again, eh?"

Rodney spun on his heel and stalked back down the hallway, forcing Zelenka to jog to keep up. He couldn't stand the smug look on the Czech's face.

"Temporarily. The Colonel is just trying to goad me into an infantile reaction and I refuse to rise to the bait."

"And he gave you the slip. You can't make him pay up, you know. He has guns and knives and many sorts of dangerous things. He could just refuse."

It was Rodney's turn to feel smug. "This is Sheppard we're talking about. He'll pay up. He won't like it – which is why it's so enjoyable – but he'll pay. Once he realizes that I'm not going to beg, he'll get bored and give in. Right now he's just playing sore loser."

"It is better than sore winner."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Rodney snapped then hustled back through the doors into the lab he and Zelenka were inspecting today, hoping that Radek would drop the subject. The man was smiling way too much for Rodney's liking. He pounced on a laptop. The idiots on this project were way behind schedule.

"Broadcasting a victory announcement to all the department heads was not good sportsmanship, Rodney."

"That was just insurance to make sure Sheppard pays up. He started it – all that bragging and boasting about his new _plan_ to deploy his grunts into the city at a moment's notice. His marvelous grid."

"You helped him design the maps."

"Exactly! He comes to us to figure out everything, then goes on and on about his great ideas."

"He only asked us to review his grid in the context of the most efficient sensor configurations. Colonel Sheppard designed the maps and deployment plans himself, _in response_ to the Asgard attack on the city last month. You and Dr. Jackson were kidnapped, Rodney. His wish is only to respond more quickly to similar threats in the future!"

"And I appreciate that!" Rodney heard his voice go sarcastic, but Radek was clearly missing the point, the point being, "But I still found the cache first, proving that skilled use of technology will always be better than even the most efficient of manual search parties. Sheppard made a bad bet. And when I catch up to him again - " Rodney rubbed his hands together, unable to keep the expression of avarice off his face, "Spiderman comes to papa!"

"IF you catch up to him," Radek retorted, then muttered in Czech for a moment. He too began tapping at the next laptop over. "You could always scan for the Colonel's transponder signature."

Rodney jerked his head up at Radek's sly tone. "_That_ would be poor sportsmanship," he quipped, feeling his face redden. "He'll pay up. And stop yapping. I'm tired of these guys complaining about missing parts and power fluctuations. If this project doesn't get back on track in the next week and prove that there's potential for practical application of the Cohall flight recorder, I'm scrapping it."

"It was designated a military and defense application. Mr. Woolsey and Colonel Sheppard are to decide the fate of projects such as this."

"Based on MY recommendations!" Rodney rolled his eyes and gave Radek a scathing look. "What is with you today? You almost sound like you're on Sheppard's side!" Rodney chortled at the impossibility. Radek kept typing, pointedly silent. "Hey! You're not on his side, are you? Because that would be treason." To his own credit, he kept the accusation lighthearted.

Radek gave him a look that was so disgusted and so...shrewd - his eyes all screwed up and his eyebrow all bristling out lopsided - that Rodney's face flushed again and he slapped at his keyboard for the next several minutes in silence.

"You're _supposed_ to be on my side," he muttered finally, not exactly to himself, and then wondered why Radek began banging his head against the desk.

* * *

Late that night, Rodney found his eyes crossing and decided that he'd reached the point where he would be more useful to the good of the universe if he got some sleep. He shut down the Cohall lab, convinced that he'd got them far enough along to finish their preliminary reports, and shuffled down the hall towards the transporter that would zip him over to the residential tower. He swiped the bar, thinking with a grin about Sheppard running away like a girl. Well, like a _normal_ girl, not that there were any of those on Atlantis. All of the girls that were on Atlantis would kick his butt for even thinking the phrase "run like a girl." He almost looked over his shoulder just to make sure none had turned psychic and were coming after him.

He shoved at the dot, then left the transporter for his apartment. He hadn't seen Sheppard the rest of the day. For just a second, a small doubt creeped into Rodney's mind. Could Sheppard really be mad at him? He shoved the worry away, or tried to. He and John had been 'good' for a long time. More than good. He still woke up with nightmares about losing his mind and his memories and managed to go back to sleep every time, knowing that he had a friend like John to watch his back should he need it again.

Every now and then he did wonder _why_ John was his friend - the cool and athletic career Air Force Colonel wasn't what you would call a logical candidate. On one level, their friendship seemed built on Rodney mocking him and John deflecting the defensive behavior with a well-placed smack-down. On another, their friendship was one big contest - of wills, of intellect, on Rodney's part: ego. With sudden insight, Rodney realized that John must enjoy the competition as much as he did. The whole "who can find Lt. Feder's geocache first" race had been as much John's idea as Rodney's.

Feeling a little better, Rodney hurried to his room, desperate to get some sleep. He'd needle Sheppard tomorrow at Woolsey's staff meeting. Or... Rodney caught sight of a figure slipping down the hallway and recognized the slouched gait ... or he'd get some needling in right now!

"Sheppard!" This time, Rodney waited until he was standing right behind the man before he called out. John took another two steps, then stopped with a jerk - like he'd just remembered his own name. Feeling magnanimous, Rodney decided to give his friend some time to cope with his loss. "You can keep Spiderman for a couple of more days if you want. You don't have to keep hiding out. I'll call my minions off if you just promise to bring it by sometime before my day off."

John didn't say a word. He just tilted his head, straightened, then began walking down the hall again. Rodney realized that he was heading away from his room rather than towards it, which was strange. It was nearly 2:00 in the morning. "Where are you going? Is something up?" He jogged ahead to try to get a look at John's face. Maybe he _was_ mad?

John just looked tired and a little sweaty, like he'd been sparring with Ronon, although he was wearing his uniform instead of workout clothes. He shoved past, bumping Rodney's shoulder. "Go to bed, McKay," he growled and then kept walking. Rodney froze in surprise.

"Ok," Rodney said. He watched John turn the corner, kick angrily at the wall, then head towards the corridor that led to the city's central tower, out of sight.

Rodney backtracked the few steps to his own door and sank onto his bed, confused. So much for enjoying the competition. Sheppard was being every bit a sore loser as Rodney had imagined. By the time he'd pulled off his shoes and stripped down to boxers and a t-shirt, he'd gone from confused to annoyed. "If that's the way he's going to play it, I can out-sore him any day of the week. He's got nothing compared to the sore winner-ness I am capable of."

He tossed and turned for a long time, though, and in the end he decided that John was probably just mad at Ronon for beating him at kung-fu or whatever nonsense they sparred at. The memory of John looking tired and sweaty and maybe just a little beat up allowed him to finally fall asleep. That had to be it.

When his intercom buzzed at 6:00 the next morning Rodney was so groggy he hardly managed to untwist his head from the covers enough to grumble a cranky, "McKay here, go ahead."

"Dr. McKay, you are needed in the chair room immediately."

"Why?" he moaned, tempted to cover his head again. He didn't recognize the voice. Must be one of the gateroom technicians.

"It's the control chair, Doctor. It's missing. And so is Colonel Sheppard."

Rodney lurched upright and flung his feet over the edge of the bed, "Excuse me?"

"The chair is gone. Colonel Sheppard isn't answering his radio and no one can find him. Mr. Woolsey wants you to go to the chair room."

"I'm on my way!"

Rodney threw on clothes, not particularly caring whether they were clean, his brain already leaping to the problem with way too little information. Missing? How could a 300 pound piece of integrated technology simply vanish? He suddenly remembered Sheppard walking towards the tower in the middle of the night. Had his friend vanished with the chair?

_What are you up to, Sheppard?_ he thought, trying and failing to stay angry at being snubbed. _Where are you?_ And then, because he couldn't help it,_ And who's going missing next?_


	3. Chapter 3

He must have passed out because when Mo slapped him hesitantly on the cheek, John had to drag his chin up off his chest in order to glare at the man. He also had to blink a few times to clear the fuzzy edges around his vision. It didn't help all that much. He still felt woozy and achy all over. When he stretched his shoulders, they throbbed in a mother-of-a stiff neck and his side twinged at even the slight motion. A quick glance at his watch on the arm still tied to the chair, confirmed his suspicion and then some: It was well after midnight. He'd been out for several hours!

The surge of fear at the realization brought his heart pounding into his ears. He gasped and swallowed hard at the dizziness that accompanied the rush. Mo was watching him carefully as he woke up and the scrutiny annoyed him.

"What are you looking looking at?" he rasped, wishing he sounded more ferocious. "I'm not going to just die on command, here."

"You are not going to die," Mo confirmed, sounding distracted. "The hemorrhaging of fluids was stopped."

"Oh." He'd been pretty sure he was going to bleed to death in the chair. He squirmed a bit to look at his stomach and realized that, in fact, the fabric seemed stiff and tacky instead of warm and wet.

"We have completed our preliminary preparations. You are now needed to perform the next step."

"Not going to help," John declared, still craning to see through the holes in his uniform. He didn't feel a bandage. "How'd you plug me up?" he wondered, not entirely planning the thought to be spoken out loud.

Mo blew out an impatient sigh and yanked John's shirt tails up so John could get a look. John really wished he hadn't. The bullet had gone through at an angle, about four inches from entry to exit. The point-blank entry wound was small and nearly perfectly circular. The exit wound was much larger - perhaps the diameter of a soda can - and ragged. No wonder he'd dumped such a large puddle on the floor so fast; his shirts and waistband were saturated with drying blood. John deliberately ignored thinking about what the bullet might have torn up on its way through.

But it wasn't the torn skin that creeped him out - it was the greyish-bluish moss that was growing out of the holes that brought bile into his throat. The stuff was thickest in the middle of the holes and spread over the edges of the wounds like mold on old bread.

"What...what the hell is that?" he managed, squirming again, this time as if to get away from himself.

"The spores multiply and bond temporarily with the damaged cells. They will prevent hypovolemic shock in the short term, but unfortunately we did not have the time to adapt them to your specific genetic requirements."

"Huh?" John was still staring at the stuff, trying to convince his gag reflex that it was good for him.

"Your body is fighting the microbes as if they were a pathogen. Your basal temperature has already risen a full degree."

"Fever? I'll take a fever over hypo-whateveryoucalleditshock any day, but why don't you let me go check in with the doc to take care of the blue stuff, too?"

"Because you would alert your command to our presence."

John scowled and searched Mo's face for signs of humor and found none. "Who are you?" he asked at last. It was a question long overdue.

"Our homeworld is unknown to you."

_Aha! So they're not just Rodney's lab rats pushed over the edge by his egomanaical management style._ "Why are you here?"

"It is our mandate to seek out technology that will benefit our kind and acquire it."

"We have a similar mandate. Why don't we just…go somewhere a little less Frankenstein's Lab-ish and talk stuff over. Maybe we can help each other out. We're really not so different. Who knows, we could even become friends."

Mo looked horrified at the suggestion. "We are vastly different, Colonel. You are quite incapable of comprehending just how different we truly are."

"Try me," John growled.

"I realize from occupying this animal form that you consider yourselves sentient to some degree –."

"Gosh, thanks for that...wait a minute -"

"- but the level of intelligence you are capable of is severely limited by your biology."

"- you said occupying? You're _occupying_ my people?"

"The indigenous culture who abandoned this craft were far superior in ability and surprisingly intelligent for animals. We will learn much about the practical applications of the theories we have long understood."

"Wait!" John interrupted the monologue. "You're telling me that you are some kind of non-animal aliens that have hijacked the bodies of two of my expedition team for the purpose of studying Ancient technology?"

Mo beamed at him, threw a sideways look to Curly, "I told you he is quite clever." _  
_

_Like a trained dog, _John thought. He was starting to figure out why this guy was annoying him, even though he had remained on the brutal side of polite. He was arrogant; he considered John and his people ignorant. Perhaps Mo was the kind that was nice to puppies and kittens, but when it came down to it, he would think nothing of knocking off a few for the sake of his own agenda. Kindof like John didn't quite feel like knocking off Wraith was the same thing as killing another...person. It was not a comforting analogy.

"Clever enough to see through the flaw in your plan. We human animals are social, pack animals. My people will find me and stop you. So your best option here is to let me go, stop _occupying_ my people and get the hell off Atlantis before we kick you off."

"I told you he was too dangerous to be useful. We should have just exterminated them all and taken the ship at our leisure," Curly snarled from where he was watching in his chair by the workbench.

John snorted at the melodramatic pronouncement, but a little jolt of fear fluttered John's already fast pulse, none the less. He had no doubt that they could find a way to kill most of the expedition if they wanted to, especially since no one – else – knew they were lurking in the city. Curly was the kind that kicked puppies and drowned kittens for fun, John decided.

Mo went nervous again. There was clearly difference of opinion between these two. Kidnapping must have been Mo's idea.

"The technology was designed to be manipulated by creatures of this form. It only makes sense for us to use that advantage," Mo explained.

"That's why you needed someone with the gene," John confirmed, understanding a little more. "You want to figure out the technology, but couldn't do it with your borrowed bodies."

"Yes. We still have not been able to synthesize a treatment that will entice this body to accept the indigenous gene."

"Our own doctors can only get the ATA gene therapy to work in 40% of our people," John confirmed.

"Our own kind are more interested in the hard sciences than in animal biology."

"You sound like Rodney."

"So _you_ will help us." Mo pulled out the green crystal and John watched it nervously as the man/alien/thing went on. "The next step requires access to the chair room. You will be allowed entry without question. Once the task is complete, we can accomplish the rest of our goals from here where we are quite well hidden."

Mo stepped to the workbench in the middle of the room and John was further shocked to see that a large area had been cleared while he'd been out. Another platform had been built in the space, this one looking just as hodge-podge and sloppy as the transporter. "You've been busy," John acknowledged, impressed despite himself. "But I won't help you."

"You do not have a choice," Curly snapped and snatched the crystal away from Mo.

John fell out of his body just as abruptly as before, but this time he felt a faint consciousness hanging around in his head with him. The feeling was disturbingly familiar and he spent a moment trying to track down the sense of deja vu when he suddenly realized that Curly was standing in front of him, holding a short length of piping. He was looking way too smug for John's liking: the stray dog was about to get kicked. Sure enough, Curly swung the stick at John's head. His view wobbled with the blow and sparks flashed, but he was powerless to duck or fight back. His damn feet were inches away from Curly's shins. One good kick... The frustration of his impotence flared into anger again and his wrists twisted slightly in their bindings.

Curly chortled, missing the twitch this time, and released John to experience the results. Once he was back inside his head, it exploded with the effects of the whack to his skull. He slammed his eyes shut against the massive headache that radiated out from the lump he could almost feel swelling up underneath his hair.

"Abuse is not necessary!" Mo squeaked.

"Animal life forms are designed to respond to sensory stimulus." Curly's words were logical, his tone was not. John seriously thought about kicking him just for spite, but...he really didn't want Curly to try out any more _sensory stimulus_ until his eyes uncrossed from the last one.

"We also...respond...to treats...and...squeaky toys," he panted through clenched teeth.

"You may consume food when you return," Mo offered promptly and John just almost laughed. The nervous kind of laugh, not the good kind.

He was almost relieved when he was yanked out of himself again. Didn't hurt nearly as much. Curly unwrapped the cords from his chest and snipped the zip-ties around his wrists. John watched from the distant stupor of his floating eyeballs as his arms pushed off the seat and his body stood up. His vision greyed immediately, and both Curly and Mo reached for an arm to steady the shaky automaton. Blood pressure was blood pressure and John knew that his body was down a pint or two. He assumed that it had to be conscious for them to control it.

They held him for a few minutes while he/it got his/its feet under him/it. John couldn't decide how to refer to himself. He felt so...distant. Mo began talking while they waited.

"Although it is late, you will hopefully run into others, eventually. You will need to acquire clothing that does not reveal that he has been injured."

John thought about the holes in his shirt and the shiny stain that was obvious even on black fabric. He had a point.

"Once you reach the chair room, the Cohall imprint should be sufficient to perform the simple command that will put the chair in maintenance mode." It was then John realized that Mo was talking to the Curly sharing his head, not him. _The Cohall device, of course!_ John shuddered and saw the twitch of reaction in his hands at the deep sense of revulsion. _Thalen & Phoebus_ - the warriors who's lifepods had beamed their consciousness into his and Elizabeth's heads...and then run all over the city trying to kill each other. These guys were using the lifepod blackbox technology on him, and had found a way to control the imprinting. It was impressive, in a terrifying way. Curly's presence wasn't as strong or overpowering as Thalen's had been, but now John recognized the feeling.

He began walking which distracted John from his musings. He needed to concentrate on what Curly-in-his-head was up to and watch for opportunities to...do something. He started with slow careful steps, then moved more confidently as Curly got used to John's form. He picked up several devices and shoved them into the large cargo pockets of John's pants, then stepped up onto the transporter platform. His hand waved a command and the room flashed.

The next half hour was a blur, literally. Curly-in-his-head moved his body from the transporter through the halls and to John's quarters in a fast, wary pace. They met no one and before John could be comforted by the trappings of home, Curly had pulled out a fresh uniform, stripped off the old one and was washing his hands and blood-streaked arms in John's bathroom. John looked at himself in the mirror as Curly inspected his body for remnants of visible blood. His face looked pale and sweaty, his eyes lined with dark shadows. He'd seen that face before - when he was recovering from surgery to repair the hole from six inches of re-bar yanked out of his side. His other side. He'd have matching scars.

Curly didn't bother washing John's sides or legs and just pulled the clean clothes over the bloody and...moldy mess of his abdomen. He moved the devices into the new pockets and then they were on the move again. They had almost made it out of the residential tower when a voice out of thin air snapped him into focus.

"Sheppard!"

_McKay! Yes! Get this guy out of my head and help me stop these loony tresspassers!_ He "spoke" the thought and was almost surprised when he didn't hear his voice saying it. Curly-in-his-head took another two steps before realizing that "Sheppard" had meant him. McKay drew closer and began rambling in typical fashion.

"You can keep Spiderman for a couple of more days if you want. You don't have to keep hiding out. I'll call my minions off if you just promise to bring it by sometime before my day off."

_What the??? Oh yeah, the stupid comic book. Look, I don't care, just look at me. Notice something, please! _Curly apparantly decided to ignore the comment and started walking again. McKay pursued, tried to stop him.

"Where are you going? Is something up?"

_Yes! Something is up! Something bad. I...need your help._

Curly-in-his-head barged past McKay, bumping his shoulder aggressively. "Go to bed, McKay," John heard his own voice growl.

"Ok," came the reply from behind him and even John recognized the hurt in the voice.

Anger exploded into rage and by the time Curly had turned the corner, John was seething. _Dammit, John! You blew it. You didn't get help and now Rodney's feelings are all hurt. He'll be avoiding you for the next week because of that snub._ He wanted to kick something, the need to blow off steam so fierce that he was shocked to see his body lurch, and his foot actually strike out at the wall.

Curly-in-his-head yanked his body back under control and continued walking. John quickly understood that anger had overpowered Curly's control for a moment and was happy to try again. He imagined swinging at the next window they passed by, fueled by the frustration of his captivity. But anger was a volatile liquid and John had spent too long keeping his deep river of the stuff under tight control. When he tried to smash the window, he was closer to curiosity than true fury and he managed only a slight twitch.

Curly instantly regained control, snatched for the combat knife hanging on John's belt and pressed the blade against John's wrist. Anyone looking at him from down the hall would have seen John alone, holding a knife to himself. The anger and frustration flared again. For just a second, he was pissed enough to consider the ignoring the threat. Even if Curly managed to cut him, a nice trail of blood would lead someone his way eventually, and a badly bleeding body - already low on the stuff - would be of no use to the intruders who surely had no good in mind for his people. The knife pressed a little deeper as Curly sensed John's temptation. A thin line of red welled up under the extremely sharp blade.

John relaxed with effort. No, no, that wouldn't work. Curly-in-his-head could slice him open before John managed enough anger and enough control to stop him. If he became useless, Curly and Mo would just nab someone else. His body would most likely be found dead from self-inflicted wounds. Curly's presence felt pleased as John backed off - for the moment. He kept a simmering flame going, however - waiting.

When they finally reached the chair room John was suffering both from anxiety and from his obviously deteriorating condition. It might not hurt to walk so far and with no compensation for the gunshot wound, but if the floating black spots and fuzzy vision were any indication, his body wasn't a happy two-person camper. Curly nodded to the bored security guard on duty outside the door.

"You're up late, sir."

"Couldn't sleep. I'm going to run some simulations in the chair for a while. Get some drone target practice," John heard his voice say. Here was his chance to get someone's attention. He fanned the flame, willed himself into deeper anger. These aliens were trying to steal his city, putting his people in danger. His arms twitched and Curly moved quickly past the guard and to the door.

_You are not getting in there you bastard!_

"Sounds fun, sir."

"Not really," Curly answered, waving the lights on in the room, fighting silently with a furious, screaming John. "Why don't you take a break in the duty room for a couple hours. I'll call you if I'm going to leave before you get back."

_Don't you dare leave your post! _John got his body to take a step towards the guard before Curly yanked back control again. The guard was eyeing him warily, clearly undecided.

"That's OK, sir. You're not armed. I'll stay."

_Good man! You just got a commendation, Sergeant._

"Then I'll make that an order. Return to the duty room and wait until I call you back."

"You OK, sir?"

John had wrenched another twitch out of Curly's control and the guard was going from wary to suspicious. Yes! Maybe all he needed to do was get his body to act wierd enough that the Sergeant would call for a doctor.

"Fine, Sergeant. Just tired. Now do as I say."

"I'll stay," the man repeated firmly and tightened his grip on his P-90. John heard himself chuckle and was distracted for a moment from his campaign against Curly.

"Well done, Sergeant," Curly was using him to say. "Just making sure you're staying on your toes." Curly shoved John's hands into his pockets. _What was he up to?_

"Thanks sir. Did seem a little odd you'd want me to leave, sir. Especially after all the trouble with the intruders last month and all the new drills."

"Exactly. Can't be too careful. Intruders can take on the appearance of anyone on base. You passed my dumb little test with flying colors."

"Sure." The Sergeant fidgeted for a second. "You really going in there, sir?"

"No. Not tonight. Finish your watch."

Curly turned as if to leave and John was confused. Had he realized that John would fight him and was going to give up on the chair? John only had a second to realize he was completely wrong when Curly whipped out one of the items he'd shoved into his pockets and jammed it into the Sergeant's side.

_Oh, crap! No, no, no, no, no!_

The loyal guard seized. His lips peeled back in a horrified grimace and his neck stood out in strings. Blood began to trickle out of his nose. _I said STOP!_ John screamed, feeling his fury spike and Curly jerked away from the soldier, breaking the contact. The Sergeant collapsed in a heap on the ground. John's body jerked and rocked as he battled internally with Curly. He could see his hands shaking, his chest heaving with the effort. His vision greyed out into a startling fog. The fog overwhelmed him and John drifted for a time. When it finally cleared, his line of sight was askew. He'd fallen against, and slid down, the doorframe and sat staring at the motionless guard.

He could feel Curly struggling with his half-conscious body. When it did finally lurch back upright, John watched dully as Curly pulled out one more device, aimed it at the guard. A white beam, just like the culling beam from a Wraith dart, surrounded the Sergeant and then sucked him into the device. Curly closed the chair room door behind him and locked it. John had failed, and probably gotten his man killed in the process. He wanted to close his eyes, he wanted to stop and think because everything was still foggy and there were still spots swimming in his vision.

But Curly just kept going. His hands poked at the control panel for a while. John watched and was able to figure out that Curly was shutting the chair down for some reason, unlinking most of the city's connections to it. He sat down next in the chair and it responded instantly to John's ATA by reclining and lighting up with a brilliant blue glow. He could tell Curly was concentrating hard and John remembered something about Mo saying the imprint "should" be enough.

If only he could imprint himself on the city, somehow. Leave a black box of his own for Rodney to find - a clue. _Wait a minute!_

John concentrated as hard as Curly, but this time he didn't need to move muscles or re-route emotion - the link between mind and body was direct to the chair. The ATA would interpret the chemical signals regardless of the Cohall imprint's interference. The heads' up display flashed into life and Curly grunted and cleared the screen. _Rats_. Curly didn't seem mad, though; he was having enough trouble working the chair that he seemed to have assumed the HUD had just been a mistake. John tried again. The HUD flashed again and John _thought_ so hard that his brain hurt. Curly cursed and cleared the screen, dug his fingers into the squishy control arms, then sighed in relief. The chair tilted into its upright position; John watched his feet sinking back to the ground. The chair went dark.

Had he finished his message in time? Had it worked at all? John didn't know, and with the uncertainty came a mental lethargy that even Curly noticed. His body moved slowly and clumsily out of the chair and Curly had to hang on tightly to the arms when standing brought another rush of vertigo. John watched dully as Curly pulled out the device that had sucked up the guard then reversed the beam and dumped the unconscious Sergeant back onto the floor in the corner of the room. _At least he's not...gone_, John thought, his despair mounting.

Curly turned the mini-wraith beam on the chair next. He twiddled with the dials, aimed carefully and before John could muster so much as a sneeze of a protest, the chair was gone, sucked into the device.

The walk to the closest transporter took a long time. John's body moved more and more slowly and Curly finally had to steady it with a hand against the hallway with each step. John's floating vision was so blurry, he felt like he was being carried around in a mist. His mind wandered, wondering how he'd gotten back on the planet with the sentient fog.

"Colonel Sheppard? Do you...need any help?"

John hardly reacted to the barely familiar, female voice. Curly-in-his-head turned and straightened, trying to look stronger. The face that came into view was also familiar - one of the gate technicians, on a break during the night shift most likely.

"Thanks, but no. Pulled a muscle running. I'm headed back to my room for a shower and some sleep. See you in the morning."

They were almost at the tower transporter and Curly lunged inside without another word. He waited til the doors slid shut, then tapped a code into the manual control panel instead of using the touch map. The room flashed and John was looking at Curly and Mo's lab.

_Well, damn_, John thought. He hadn't stopped them, he didn't even know if his message had worked, and he was back where he started.

"Did you get it? Were you seen? Was there any trouble?"

The excitable Mo kept glancing at the real Curly, clearly hoping that he'd be vindicated by a successful mission.

"It's here," Curly-in-his-head said with John's voice. He handed over the mini-wraith beam and then stumbled to lean heavily on the workbench. "I had to engage the guard at the chair room. This _animal_ - " John's arm thumped its own chest angrily "fought the imprint and drew the guard's suspicion. Two others witnessed Colonel Sheppard moving through the city."

"Good!" Mo said looking relieved. "The witnesses will help create the suspicion that the Colonel is involved in the theft of the chair. They will waste time looking for him rather than us."

"The imprint is fading," John's voice said. "This body is in distress."

"Try to return to the chair," the real Curly snapped, reaching for the cords, but it was too late. Curly-in-his head took one more step, then simply ceased. Like when Thalen's imprint had occupied his mind, John seized at the abrupt absence and snapped back into his body. He fell against the desk, banging his side into the edge then slid to the floor. The resulting flare of exquisite pain drew a howl from deep inside John's chest even as he convulsed. He was still twitching when the surge of complaints - fever, anemia and good old-fashioned exhaustion - overwhelmed him and the world went black.

_Your turn, Rodney. I couldn't stop them. It's up to you now. Figure it out. Please...figure it out._


	4. Chapter 4

The chair room was seething with agitation. Rodney smacked into the storm unprepared and had to pause to take it all in. Woolsey was hovering over the platform where the chair was - in fact - missing. Lorne and a couple of security guys were standing with him. A loud clank of metal drew Rodney's attention to the corner of the room where Jennifer Keller was hovering over a man on a stretcher that orderlies had just extended to waist height. They began pushing the bed as a group towards the door. Jennifer paused only long enough to fire off a quick report to Woolsey.

"Sgt. Knight shows evidence of intracerebral hemorrhage. We need to get him to the scanners to see how severe the bleeding is, though. I'll let you know how he's doing in an hour or so."

"Can he tell us what happened here?" Woolsey called as she walked away to stay with the stretcher.

"He's in a coma. I don't know how bad the damage is, yet. If it is severe, he may never be able to tell us." Her voice was grim and Woolsey dismissed her with a nod.

Rodney watched the injured guard roll by and felt a familiar lump of anxiety knot up his stomach. On days when he wasn't worrying about dying at the hands of Wraith and killer pathogens, Rodney was certain he would one day bleed out from the ulcers eating him up from the inside out. At the moment, he wasn't sure which kind of day this was going to be. Woolsey spotted him and waved him over.

"Dr. McKay! You'll notice that we've been robbed."

"Yeah, I see that. And what's with Sheppard? You've tried radioing him?"

"Immediately after the theft was reported and Sgt. Knight was found. I've sent people to his room and to his usual haunts. Ronon and Teyla are still looking, but it's not like Sheppard to miss a party." Lorne answered the question, the one with the most at stake in finding his CO.

"I saw him last night."

"Where? When?!"

"Around 2:00. In the residential tower. He looked like he was just leaving his room and heading towards the central tower."

"Well, that gives us a timeframe," Lorne muttered, throwing a look at one of the security officers next to him. The man was writing on a little notebook. "It seems too much of a coincidence that Sheppard and the chair have gone missing at the same time."

"Agreed," Woolsey interjected. "Tell Zelenka to use the city's scanners if Ronon and Teyla don't find him. Search for the Colonel's transponder signature. In the meantime, Dr. McKay, do you have any idea how _this_ could happen?" He waved a hand over the empty platform.

"Give me a minute," Rodney snapped. He took one step towards the room's control console when Lorne blocked his way.

"Here McKay," put these on if you're going to type. He held out a pair of latex gloves. Rodney finally noticed that Lorne and his security men were already wearing them. "Forensics boys will be here soon to dust the console for prints."

"Oh. Sure. I've never worked in a 'crime scene' before."

"We need the information, so go ahead. Just try not to - I don't know - smear your fingers around too much."

Rodney tried. He poked at the keys with gingerly taps of the very tips of his fingers and spent a few minutes running through screens of data. "Someone unlinked the chair from the city's control systems at around 2:46 a.m."

"Can you tell who?"

Rodney chuffed at Woolsey's eager tone. "If I could, I would have said '_so-and-so_ unlinked the chair from the city's control systems.' _Who-ever-it-was _hacked themselves a command code before they got here. They unhooked it, then put the chair in maintenance mode, which is what you do if you need to work it without accidentally triggering commands."

"Or if you wanted to move it?" Lorne asked pointedly.

"Yes. And if you didn't want to damage the chair doing it."

"So," Woolsey said, tapping his chin as he thought it through, "whoever stole the chair was after the chair itself. We're not dealing with pure sabotage or terrorism simply for the sake of disabling the city."

"McKay, how bad off are we without the chair?" This was from Lorne again.

"The city has redundant controls for almost every system the chair controls. The chair is just the most efficient and user-friendly way to initiate commands."

"What about drones?"

"Drones can be launched from the control room, with some re-routing, but guidance and integration with the sensors will be severely limited."

"What can we _not_ do without the chair?"

McKay thought about it and came up with only one answer. "Fly. We couldn't fly the city without the chair. Piloting a craft this complicated can only be done if the chair is integrating the hundreds of systems involved in flight."

"So do you think someone stole the chair to use in their own ship?" Lorne snapped his fingers and his eyes lit up in the same way Sheppard's did when he was sure he'd come up with a brilliant idea before Rodney. "The Tower. The other city that you guys traded with for the drones and jumpers. They stole it!"

"They had a working chair. They don't need ours. And their city is completely grounded, literally. Most of it has been buried for hundreds of years."

"Oh."

"Yeah, 'oh'. Not to mention that - unless someone just forgot to mention it - we saw no ships on the scanners, nor any unusual gate activity that would indicate intruders. Considering the hacked code and the relative ease with which someone got in here, this looks more like..." Rodney hesitated, realizing how his statement was going to sound, "-an inside job."

"I'm sure Colonel Sheppard's involvement is purely honorable," Woolsey intoned, "But you are correct that the evidence is troubling. Major Lorne, increase security throughout the city, especially sensitive labs and main city controls. In the meantime, Doctor, do you have any idea how the chair was removed from the room once it was disconnected?"

Rodney could only shrug. "I worked on the Antarctic chair and I know it's heavy. You'd need a lift or trolley at least."

"I'll get the forensics boys to look for marks on the floor." Lorne nodded again at his man, clearly passing on the command.

"And ask everyone on the night shift if they happened to see...anything," Rodney finished lamely. "I'm going up to the control room and dig deeper into the sensor logs. Maybe we missed a cloaked ship in the neighborhood, or something else."

"You work on the how," Lorne agreed. "I'll work on the 'who'. We'll go from the inside job angle and start interviewing. Can you loan us someone you trust to help look into the hack?"

"You can have Radek. I want to help look for Sheppard." Rodney included himself pointedly in that aspect of the 'who' search. "I'll make sure Zelenka didn't screw up the scans for his transponder and begin further sensor sweeps if needed." Like Woolsey, Rodney believed that if Sheppard had been involved in the theft of the chair, it was only in the capacity of trying to stop it. And if John had gone missing during an attempt to stop the theft, then he was in trouble. Rodney had to work fast, because trouble always included a deadline.

"Thanks, McKay," Lorne said with a grateful nod. "Is there anything you need here before I close off the room and let forensics work?"

"Let me link this console to the workstations upstairs. That'll let me remotely access anything I need from there."

Rodney typed for another minute as the room filled up with more soldiers, these wearing light uniforms and carrying lots of equipment. He allowed himself just a bit of amusement at the inclusion of scanners, LSD and various other Ancient devices these men had added to their investigative repertoire. Rodney didn't watch many cop shows, but he knew every unit on Earth would kill for the technology this one had access to.

"Done," he announced at last and stripped off his gloves. He headed towards the door, anxious to get to the tower and begin his own set of investigations. He had just reached the threshold when Lorne dropped his hand from his radio and halted him with a call.

"McKay! We just heard from one of the night shift technicians. She said she saw Sheppard enter the tower transporter a little after 0300. She said she asked him if he needed help because he was limping and bracing against the wall. He told her he'd just pulled a muscle and was going to his room for the night."

"Did they find anything in his room?" Rodney had to ask, even though Lorne's dark expression was making him nervous.

Lorne nodded grimly. "He's not there. But they found a bloody uniform and more blood all over his bathroom sink. I told them to take it to Keller to see if she can tell who's blood it is."

"Right. I'll...go get started." There wasn't anything else to say. He jogged into the hall, faster than before. Sheppard had been seen,was maybe injured, and he hadn't called for help? He hadn't alerted security during the theft although he'd been skulking around at just the right time. And now he was hiding out, and not just because he owed Rodney a Spiderman collectible comic book. It didn't make any sense. Yet.

Rodney panted into the control room and practically shoved the technician who happened to be sitting at his regular workstation out of the chair. He immediately began a sensor sweep of the entire system, then pulled up the logs for the past 24 hours. Zelenka joined him a few minutes later, perched at the next station over.

"We find no trace of Colonel Sheppard's transponder anywhere in the city," Radek said, his voice soft and concerned. Rodney just typed harder at his own keyboard.

"Expand the search. Look in the water. And start looking into how someone could have hacked themselves a command code without my noticing."

"Yes, I have already spoken briefly with Major Lorne." There was a pause. Rodney absorbed the stream of sensor data flowing into his brain from the screen. Radek became equally absorbed, and pulled yet another laptop over to start more programs running before he spoke again. "No signatures in the water."

"Check the gate logs. Make sure there was no unexplained gate activity this morning."

"We already did that. Rodney - "

"Then go check the jumper bay. Manually confirm that they are all still accounted for and check inside in case they can shield a transponder signal."

"I will but - "

"I'll run a sensor sweep of the mainland."

"That seems - "

"Radek, just do it! Stop making excuses and just look for the man, will you!"

"I am not making excuses," Radek snapped back. "I am just wishing to say... we'll find him. Colonel Sheppard is a very resourceful man. I do not believe he would be missing if he were dead. There is reason for his disappearance. When we discover that reason, we will discover him."

Rodney bit his tongue at the confidence in Radek's tone. He didn't have enough information to contradict such optimism quite yet. He did have enough to create a new-ulcer-sized worry.

"I hope you're right," he said finally. For that, at least, he could say with absolute sincerity.


	5. Chapter 5

_John burst into the moldy, smelly lab, his security team hot on his heels. He looked over the room, plotting its dimensions in his head. Big room - 30 X 50. Three doors.  
_

_"Search pattern Delta." It was all he had to say. They'd been drilling patterns for days and the competition with Rodney's scanners had motivated all of them to perfect their system. Walker immediately spun in a tight circle, LSD in hand, and called out, "Lifesigns - _clear_!" Wasn't expecting any on this search, but John insisted they follow all the protocols. Mitchelson and Edison moved fairly slowly through the room, scrutinizing the few remaining desks and consoles, weapons held at readiness_.

_Walker's job was to secure the entrances, as was John's. They communicated their mutual choice of their first door with a quick glance then jogged over to it. Walker reached for the control bar and John took his position_ - _P-90 high, stance secure - in the doorframe just as Walker swiped. The doors hissed open. John took a single step closer._

"Clear!"_ he called. It was a storage closet, as he'd suspected. Emptied long ago when the Ancients left the city He did take an extra second to make sure that the geocache they were looking for wasn't tucked into any shadows, and then he turned with Walker towards the second door. Probably another closet._

_Edison was ransacking one of the few desks with drawers and John felt his chest tighten with a little bit of excitement. They were moving fast, efficiently. It was a really small box of trinkets, left by some expedition members for others to have some fun finding during down time. Rodney would have a hell of time sorting it out from all the random junk in this pier of the city. He was sure they were close._

_"Next door," he said, unable to supress a grin. Walker was also grinning, he felt it too.  
_

_The Lieutenant was just reaching to swipe at the second door's control bar, John was already in position when John's radio hissed into life. He froze, distracted and he heard the others in the room do the same. Walker was already swiping, though, and the door in front of John slid open. Oops. John quickly cleared the space even while he was fighting not to curse in front of his men at the jubilant and oh-so-infuriatingly smug voice of Rodney McKay blaring in their ears._

_"I found it! I found it! South Pier, room __227__, Coordinates are:__ 51.34 by 66.918._

_"Dammit! That's the room we're in!" Edison exclaimed and threw himself into a moldy chair. He leapt up again quickly and slapped at his pants. The chair must have still been damp from the last hard rain that kept seeping into these places._

_"It's not in there," John sighed, waving at the door they'd just opened. Bathroom, not closet. "Shall we try behind door number three?"_

_Walker looked completely dejected. "I suppose so, sir. It matches the coordinates."_

_Not bothering to do a formal security sweep, Walker just jabbed at the bar. John's team gathered around to peer inside._

"_That's it," Walker groaned, comparing the space against his palm scanner. He bent to pick up the small metal suitcase and flipped open the lid to reveal a handful of items - a pack of cigarettes, a can of beer, a candy bar or two, and what looked like a seashell-the kind they found on the mainland all the time.  
_

_"Confirmed, McKay," John decided to be the man and made himself deliver the confession. "It's here. You were about 10 seconds ahead of us."_

_"Yes! Yes, yes, yes. I knew it. Science and engineering triumph yet again over brute force and grunting. I won and you and your baboons lost."_

_"Knock it back a notch, McKay!" John snapped into his headset. Walker and Edison were shifting angrily as Rodney ranted and John felt a flush of heat himself. "I wasn't kidding about the ten seconds. We almost had it, and if you're so good with the scanners, you're looking at us now and you know it."_

"_I still won. I still won," Rodney __chanted __in an annoying__ singsong._

"_And if we'd been doing this in a firefight and the scanners went out, we would have won." He looked at his guys, made sure they saw him calling them out, "You did good, guys. You nearly beat a lazy ass sitting three miles away poking some damn buttons. Skill and teamwork still trumps gadgets and arrogance in my book." __Sheppard changed topics quickly to distract Rodney from the snub, but his men were grinning again. "__What tipped you off, Rodney. How'd you find it?" He looked at the odd collection of items in the cache, wondering how any of that could have given it away.  
_

"_Calcium carbonate. There's a shell or sand or something in it, isn't there?"_

_John picked up the delicate seashell that was about as broad as his palm, and resembled a cross between a sand dollar and a clam. "Yeah. Seashell."_

"_The chemical composition stuck out among all the man-made alloys."_

"_I'll be damned. All right then."_

_John palmed the shell and dug in his pants for the item he'd brought to leave. Local tradition said you could take one thing from the cache if you left something else. He found his Atlantis Unit challenge coin buried in a corner of the pocket and dropped it in, to the surprise of his guys. They whistled and clucked appreciatively. Walker and Edison also traded out._

"_So what did you find?" Rodney asked over the radio, sounding curious._

_John grinned at his team. "You found it, McKay. You walk your ass down here and look. We're on our way back." That'll teach the know-it-all.  
_

"_Oh fine. Just don't forget you owe me Spiderman."_

"_Tomorrow."_

"_And no later, Sheppard. No weaseling out of this one. That baby is mine."_

_John just yanked his headset out of his ear and shoved it into his pocket. His team followed him out of the room and back towards the populated parts of the city. Damn McKay and his ego. If he'd just win and be done with it, John could handle that. But McKay would be on the subject for days. Usually, losing to McKay didn't bug him so much. (Usually, he won.) But as he marched his men back home, he found himself fighting down real anger. He wasn't mad at McKay, he finally realized. He was mad at himself. His strategy and search patterns hadn't been good enough. If this had been a real emergency... He broke into a run, forcing the guys to jog after him. If this had been a real emergency, his people could have been hurt or...taken before he got there._

_That night, when he'd collapsed on his bed after studying his plans for hours - again - he pulled out the shell that was still in his pocket. He turned it over for a minute, studying its creamy smooth surface, the odd organic hinge, the starlike pattern of ridges on the lid.  
_

"_Calcium carbonate, huh?" he said out loud, holding the shell up to the light.  
_

_And then he smashed it into the floor to watch it shatter into a powder of broken bits..._

John lay still for a while after he woke up. Even with his eyes closed and his body relaxed, he could tell that he was on the floor - the cool decking was rough under his cheek - and that his hands were bound together by zip ties again. Curly and Mo were nearby, tapping at keyboards and occasionally speaking softly to each other. When the awkward tilt of his neck grew uncomfortable enough to try to roll off his shoulder, he also discovered that his ankles were tied. He curled forward instead, drawing his knees into his chest and lying in a little ball of miserable self-pity.

He cracked his eyes open a tiny bit, curious about how long he'd been out this time. The room swam in lazy circles around him and it was an act of will to get his eyes to focus on his watch. 0700. Damn. He closed them again and tried to breath deeply through the sense of vertigo. He'd crashed for another 3 hours. He could feel the heat behind his eyes from what must be an impressive fever, and his whole middle felt inflamed and tender. How long had it been since he'd had so much as a drink of water? And what the hell were these guys up to now they'd stolen the chair? And where the hell was Rodney? Did he always have to do this himself? He was still on Atlantis. Surely someone had bothered to noticed that the most important piece of equipment in the city had gone missing. Surely someone had noticed that...he was missing?

Shame simmered into a low throbbing anger, igniting more easily with recent practice. Not only had he failed to stop these guys, but he was responsible for the security that had allowed it to happen in the first place. Security that apparently still wasn't capable of figuring it out. A wave of fury swept through him and he thrashed in frustration. The anger allowed him to push through the agony of sitting upright and he struggled into a quivering slump, panting through the tingles and stabs chasing around his insides.

Once he'd forced down the pain long enough to look around, he realized he'd been bound and dragged into a corner of the room, dumped among the piles and boxes of junk. He could just see Mo and Curly's heads over the top of the workbench from his patch of floor.

"Hey," he called weakly. He scooted a little and propped his shoulder against a big storage crate. "You promised me treats."

He was utterly ignored and briefly considered whining to get attention, just for the ludicrousness of it.

"Hey!" he yelled louder. "I could at least use some water. You promised mom you'd take care of your pets."

Curly quirked an evil grin, clearly enjoying that John was close to begging and clearly planning to continue to ignore him. Mo threw an impatient look at his partner, then shoved back his seat to disappear from view for a moment. When he returned, he was carrying a dripping water bottle that he tossed clumsily in John's direction. John had to scoot a few feet to reach it, then pushed himself back to the crate. The bottle was gone hardly before he'd realized he'd begun drinking. It seemed only to whet his thirst rather than quench it. He sagged heavily, watching the aliens.

"I know you!" John exclaimed, having a moment to put a few things together. "You've been working on the Cohall project for the last year. Rodney told me you haven't figured out much and keeps threatening to kill the project."

"Dr. Strai was working on the Cohall mental pattern recorder," Mo confirmed absently, not looking away from his screen.

"Right, you're just _occupying_ Dr. Strai. What about you?" John jutted his chin at Curly. "What do you work on around here when you're not conceiving eeeevil plans?"

Curly scowled and Mo flicked him a look, answered for him, "Dr. Kovich is a plant biologist. He is the member of your tribe that we first encountered. When we discovered that we would require the use of another specialist to complete our mission, Strai was incorporated."

"How's that work, exactly?" John pressed. He needed to know if there was a way to kick these guys out of his guys.

"The chemical makeup of your animal bodies provides acceptable nutrition for us to exist without direct access to photosynthesis for a time. The electrical pattern of your consciousnesses are sufficiently simple to interpret and mimic with a high degree of accuracy. We can drive these forms for some time until our nutritional needs exceed the body's resiliency."

As usual, Mo answered like he was reading from a college text book. John swallowed hard in disgust as he puzzled out the explanation.

"You guys are plants? Eating my people from the inside and working them like some kind of...meat puppets?" The anger was bubbling to the surface again, and John was finding it hard to control.

"Clever..." Mo murmured, back to staring at his screen.

"Where's the RoundUp when you need it," John muttered to himself. Where the hell was his team?!

Suddenly agitated, he decided he'd just have to do this the hard way: by himself.

"So, when do I get to go out to play with the other critters? You going to turn us all into puppets, or do some of us get to be your personal Cohall device robots forever? When's breakfast? The water was great and all but I'm starving."

He actually felt so nauseous that eating was the last thing on his mind. But he kept up a running patter of nonsense until Curly and Mo were working so hard at ignoring him, it was unlikely they'd notice if he turned into a frog and hopped away. Still chattering, he curled up his knees and reached for the small knife he had hidden in his boot. As a weapon, it was practically useless, but if he could cut the zip ties and grab for something else, a crow bar or even just a heavy wrench, maybe he could knock out or overpower these guys long enough to call for help.

His hand shook as his fingers curled around the warm haft of the small blade. Trying not to move suspiciously, John kept his hand out of sight as he pulled the knife out and slipped it under the tie. It popped off with only a quick slice. He flinched as the plastic scratched against the flooring. Neither Curly no Mo looked up and John next pulled his knees into his chest, hid his hands in his lap. He turned the knife backwards and sawed at the tie around his wrists. The skin was already raw and scraped from the plastic's sharp edges.

When that tie also broke apart, John sat for a moment. Exhilaration filled him up with courage. He was free. That was the easy part. Convincing his battered body to perform what was likely to become a strenuous feat of physical violence was going to be hard. For just a second, he allowed himself to wish that, just once, someone would come bursting through the door and save him before he had to do it himself. His stomach hurt like hell. His head was throbbing and his t-shirt was soaked in a fever-flushed sweat. If it were only himself at stake, he'd have almost considered curling up and simply waiting for rescue.

But Curly and Mo were getting closer to whatever they planned with every keystroke of their nasty little plant fingers. The fear of what would happen if he didn't stop them mingled with the anger...and the courage. He took a deep, ragged breath and flipped onto his knees. He pulled hard at the crate at the same time to heave himself standing with as little strain on his middle as possible. The aliens jerked their heads up in astonishment, but John was already moving. He spotted a length of metal tubing, about an inch in diameter and about two feet long - leftover from the construction of the transporter, probably. John snatched it off the shelf. Curly stood up and lunged for the green crystal lying haphazardly on the workbench, but John was faster. He took a single step and swung, sweeping a good swatch of the junk off the table onto the floor, the crystal along with it.

Curly's eyes went nasty. His stool screeched and fell over as he hurtled around the table towards John. John slammed the tubing down again and knocked more stuff to the floor with a huge crash. Mo ducked under the edge as bits of wire and broken plastic flew his way. In the same smooth swipe, John continued his arc and brought the metal into Curly's side just as the enraged alien rounded the last corner. Curly stopped with a grunt. John pulled back, swung again and caught Curly in the back of a leg, dropping him to his knees. For an instant, John considered bashing Curly's skull, but the rumpled and stained uniform on the man stayed his hand - these were still his people after all. There was still a chance Keller could do something for them.

Instead, he took a measured swing and whacked just hard enough to put him out for a while. Curly slumped forward onto his stomach and John put his foot between the shoulder blades, pressing him into the floor - just in case. The whole encounter took all of thirty seconds and John suspected that Curly had gone down because of surprise rather than any great strength of his own. He looked quickly around for Mo, and didn't spot him immediately. He swept his gaze further around the rest of the room. To his surprise, the stolen control chair was sitting on the homemade platform in the middle of the cleared out space. But where the hell was Mo?

John stomped on Curly's back just for good measure, then stalked towards the workbench. He held his weapon at the ready, bent down to look underneath, expecting to see the jittery alien cowering there.

"Shit!" John cried, and threw himself forward and flat, reaching desperately for the green crystal that had bounced and rolled against the far leg of the bench. Mo scrambled on his hands and knees even harder for the crystal he'd already been crawling towards. A groan escaped when John landed flat out on his shredded belly and he felt sweat pop out on his forehead from the excruciating jolt. But he gritted his teeth and stretched with every inch of his reach to get to the crystal first. His fingers brushed the smooth, green surface and the crystal spun under the pressure of his fingertips. John drew up a knee to scoot himself that last inch he needed - and felt a sudden yank on his ankle.

"Damn you to hell!" John yelled, frustration peaking as a suddenly not-unconscious Curly pulled him further away, allowing Mo the time to wrap his hand around the rock. John kicked, hard. Curly's hands slipped off his boot for a second, but the tenacious alien just threw himself over John's legs and pinned him down. He should have been out longer than that! What the hell were these things?!

John struggled and kicked and writhed, but was moving far too slow, his thrusts far too weak to shake off Curly's dead weight. With his last ounce of strength, he wrenched himself onto his back - Curly rolled with him, still lying over his legs - sat upright, growling around the pain, and flung his hands around Curly's head. He didn't want to kill the host, Dr. Kovich...but he didn't have a choice. John braced himself for the twist that would break cartilege and sever nerves in Curly's neck.

"Sorry doc," he growled.

When he fell out of his body at that instant, he was so furious, he almost managed to snap Curly's neck despite the Cohall device. Curly jerked away quickly as John writhed and twitched, still trying to reach him, to throttle him. Even he was impressed with the list of expletives his mind was conjuring as he raged within his own mind. There was no presence with him, no curly-in-his-head, just that blank wall of separation he could only penetrate with hatred and instinct. He literally saw red. Both aliens cowered at John's feet; both took a nervous step backward when John managed to fling himself a few feet towards them to end up, panting, on his hands and knees.

"He will collapse soon," Curly said with a sneer, sounding for all the world like a hunter who's just shot a deer and is just waiting for it to bleed out. The man's smug confidence fanned John's fury and he lurched again. Mo scrambled back a step, but Curly struck out with his foot and smashed John's face. Blood spattered the floor in John's view and then he was sinking down to join it. His shoulder bumped first. John could see his hands shaking and his legs trembling as his body succumbed to the Cohall device and the consequences of the battle, even though he couldn't feel it doing so.

Curly and Mo heaved him to his feet and drug his body to the control chair. He struggled, he fought, but only managed random jerks. The chair lit up and reclined into position when they placed his twitching hands on the armrests. _Damn, _he thought. _They've even got it working already._

Curly tied cording around his chest and legs and arms, nearly mummifying him into the seat. Curly sneered and taunted him with the green crystal, but John recognized the fear implied by the exaggerated restraints: they were wary. John's simmering defiance lasted only until his battered body slammed back around him. The impact was almost excruciating enough to knock him into oblivion in the first instant. He choked on the blood streaming out of his nose. His hands curled like claws around the arms of the chairs. His side felt like it had split open from hip to ribcage, and there was a fresh pool of sticky warmth gathering on his waistline. He writhed for a long moment until, exhausted, he was reduced to weak restlessness.

"Your defiance is foolish. You are a most useful human. Your cooperation will earn you a much longer existence," Mo chided him. The dark-skinned doctor was leaning over the keyboard at the workbench and typing. A low thrum began to build underneath John's seat. It took him a moment to realize that the whole room was vibrating.

"I--won't--help--you." John groaned.

"I think you will," Mo repeated with that same optimism, and John flinched. "If you don't, this city will be torn apart in takeoff. We have programmed the star drive to launch the craft, but it will require a pilot for the operation to be conducted successfully. If you refuse, the star drive will tear the city apart when it executes its programming. All of your companions will be destroyed with it."

"And if I do help. What happens to...companions?"

"When we reach our homeworld, you will order them to evacuate through the Stargate. They may continue their existence on any world with a Stargate that they choose."

"So nice." John barely had enough air to breathe, let alone talk. "They'll stop you."

"Oh, I am certain they will try. They will not succeed." The rumble grew louder and with a sudden swell in volume, the whole room began to shake. Gadgets and doodads bounced on shelves, a couple slid to the floor with small crashes. Mo just looked around in satisfaction. He punched another button on his laptop and grinned. "You see, we've already begun."


	6. Chapter 6

Rodney's fingers against the keyboard became frantic slaps of frustration. "Internal scans - negative. System wide scans - negative. Deepspace and subspace scans - negative!" He began muttering as he dug further into the logs and ran every sort of detection system Atlantis possessed. "Nothing!" he snapped at last and flung himself against the back of his seat.

"I have discovered the false account that was used to access the chair controls."

Rodney shoved with his knees and rolled his chair into Radek's with a clatter. "Show me."

Radek glared at him, but turned the screen anyway, "Here. It is not helpful though because it was hacked by means of another false account, which I suspect - "

"Was also hacked. I get it. We could spend weeks following that rabbit hole."

"I will have Darius follow the trail, regardless. I will see what other systems this account also accessed. Perhaps that will help us discover the perpetrator's intentions for the chair."

"Do it. I'm at a dead end with the scanners. There's nothing here that could indicate a cloaked or hidden ship, no anomalies that might suggest time or dimension or quantum travel."

"Colonel Sheppard is still the only person that Lorne has identified as out of place during the time frame of the theft."

"Sheppard was seen, alone, _after_ the chair was disconnected. He couldn't have just put the thing in his pocket and walked away."

"I am not suggesting he took it, but it does seem like focusing our energy on finding him is our best course of action."

"I've been trying to find him. Teyla and Ronon have been hunting down every out of bounds life sign in the city. They found a rather interesting nest of a really scary indigenous seagull, but no Sheppard."

"He would still have his transponder."

Rodney frowned at the odd tone of Radek's voice. The Czech was typing and staring pointedly at his screen. "What are you talking about? You know we've been scanning constantly for it."

"I'm just saying: if someone were able to - I don't know - trace a transponder signature over time using the automated pathogen and intruder sensors. They are separate from the city's manual scans and useful because they scan the city on a cycle - every few seconds."

Rodney felt his face flush so hot that he felt lightheaded. He opened his mouth and closed it a few times. "That would be a good idea," he choked out really hoping Radek had just gotten incredibly brilliant all of a sudden instead of...

"If we could, you know, create such a trace over time, we might discover where Colonel Sheppard was at the moment when his transponder went dark."

"I wrote, I mean - I could write that. Wow, that's a really good idea, Radek. Well done." He tried to arrange his face into an expression of praise, but it wasn't one he was skilled at.

Radek smirked. Rodney quickly rolled back to his own screen to call up the program that would do as Radek had suggested. He killed a little time, typed some random keys as if he were programming, all the while kicking himself thinking _Why didn't I think of that sooner?_ only a little more often than he was thinking _Does he know? How did he find out?_

"Ok, I've got that all coded," Rodney said at last.

"Really? So quickly?" Radek was clearly feigning surprise. _Ok, so he knows. Time to play along and figure out how to buy him off later._

"I'm a genius, remember?" Rodney had no trouble switching into sarcasm to hide his duplicity. "And - 'oh goody' - I just happen to have about a week of data in the internal automated sensor logs.

"Lucky us."

"It will take a minute to isolate Sheppard's transponder 'history' and overlay with a map of the city. You think a look at the past 24 hours is enough?"

"We can start with the past 18 hours. I saw the Colonel late last afternoon."

Rodney pulled a double take, "You were supposed to tell me if you saw him!"

Radek ignored his outrage, just shoved away from his keyboard and rolled next to him, imitating Rodney's motion of just a minute ago. "I would like to see. The fake account is also a dead end. The only system that user accessed was the pilot's log and the chair room controls during the time of the theft."

"Pilot's log?" Rodney said idly. His screen began to draw a vector rendition of Atlantis and a blue dot appeared within the wire framing. The dot moved through the city in little hops, each hop representing a minute or two.

"Yes. The log is accessed from the chair and was designed for the pilot of the city to record flight information, emergency commands, etc. It also functions as a black box: during flight, it records every command the chair relays to scrutinize later. It is easy to trigger accidentally. There are empty logs created nearly every time someone uses the chair."

"What does it say?"

"What?"

"What does the log that was created during the theft say? Even if it was only an accident, maybe it recorded something useful."

"Oh, of course!" Radek seemed genuinely chagrined that he hadn't thought of that and Rodney finally got a chance to smirk. He was watching the blue dot closely, though, tracking Sheppard as he'd gone about his day. Curious, Rodney hit a few buttons and a red dot appeared in the Cohall lab. He wanted to see how close he'd gotten to catching Sheppard before he slipped into the transporter. Sure enough, only an hour or so elapsed time, the red dot blinked out of the lab into the same hallway as Sheppard's blue dot. Red pursued blue towards the transporter. Blue vanished just as Red was catching up and then...?

"Lorne, Woolsey, I think you should get up here. We've got something to show you!" Rodney slapped at his earpiece then leaned closer to the screen, squinting. Sheppard had just...vanished. He never reappeared. He was about to fast forward through time when Radek's exclamation charged him with even more excitement.

"Rodney! Come see this right now!"

He jumped up, forgetting the dots and shouldered his way in front of Radek's screen. "This is the log?"

"Yes. I'm certain this is a clue."

"Was it the giant dossier picture of me that tipped you off? Or the lockdown command repeated four times? Don't answer that. Let me think."

Rodney shut the rest of the room out of mind and stared at the bizarre sequence of commands recorded in the log. He heard pounding feet and Radek explaining to Lorne and Woolsey what they'd discovered in the pilot's logs: "The message is cryptic, but the log includes a dossier picture of Rodney, a security command code, two more dossier pictures, and the lockdown/quarantine command repeated several times."

Lorne's voice drifted over Rodney's shoulder as the whole group clustered to peer at the screen. "That's the Foothold-Thalen security code Sheppard came up with years ago. It signifies hostiles that look like or ARE our own people and dictates a set of protocols around apprehending without killing them."

_Rodney! Foothold. Thalen._ Rodney could almost hear the message in Sheppard's voice. He couldn't prove it yet, but he was certain it was a clue from his friend.

"Who are the other two pictures of?" Woolsey asked.

"This one is Dr. Tarik Strai," Rodney answered, pointing to the darker skinned and older of the two. "I gave him the day off yesterday to work in his lab," he added softly.

"The other is Dr. Anthony Kovich, botany," Radek finished, indicating the long-haired, younger man. Lorne pointed to the end of the log.

"Why didn't the city go into lockdown if whoever left this was triggering the command?"

"The chair had already been disconnected at the console," Rodney hypothesized in a whisper. "The chair just records the commands, it doesn't record if they were carried out."

_Rodney! Foothold. Thalen. Strai & Kovich. Lockdown, lockdown, lockdown..._

The hints finally clicked and Rodney waved his arms to push through the crowd that now also included Teyla and Ronon - back from their fruitless searching - looking haggard and worried and tricked out in combat gear.

"It's a message from Sheppard," he declared as he sat and pounded at his screen, forwarding the sensor recording to 2 a.m. "Look!" Rodney pointed and a blue dot materialized at the residence tower transporter. "Sheppard's coming and going via the transporters. He first disappeared at 4 p.m. last evening. He reappaered at 1:45 this morning. He went to his room..." Rodney sped up the replay a bit and continued his play-by-play, "and then left only ten minutes later on his way to the control tower."

"Who's the red dot?" Ronon rumbled.

"Me. I ran into him...there." The dots touched, then split again. "I went to bed and I'm betting anything that Sheppard went to the chair room." No one said anything, but watched in rapt attention as the blue dot did just that. It remained in the chair room for half an hour or so, then left. "Sheppard was seen entering the tower transporter. I'll bet, yet again, that he disappears completely after he does." No one took the bet. Sheppard entered the transporter, then vanished. His blue dot never reappeared. Rodney froze the recording.

"Radek!" Rodney bellowed into the stunned silence that followed the little scanner drama. He began to type even as he spoke.

"I'm on it. Look for evidence of transporter tampering and any log/history or power consumption data we can find that might indicate where Sheppard exited."

"Lorne!"

"I can guess, go find Drs. Strai and Kovich." Rodney heard him turn away and speak into his radio to order just that.

"Excuse me, Dr. McKay but I don't understand?" Richard Woolsey's voice was calm but confused.

"Sheppard was there when the chair was stolen. He's the one who left the clue in the log, I'm sure of it. He's trying to tell us that we have intruders in the city that look like Strai and Kovich and...himself."

"You're saying Colonel Sheppard did steal the chair."

"I'm saying that the Cohall life pods gave Thalen & Phoebus the ability to transmit their consciousness into another person and take over their bodies completely. Dr. Strai was working on the Cohall device. It's no coincidence Sheppard mentions him at the same time he's wandering around acting suspicious."

"John is acting under the influence of another consciousness...again?" This question was from Teyla and even Rodney recognized the soft horror in her voice. Thalen and Phoebus had done a number on her, personally. Rodney shot her a look of sympathy and nodded.

"Should we engage the lockdown command as Colonel Sheppard suggested?" Woolsey's voice was now stern and commanding. And there it was: they had reached that magical point in every crisis where everyone asked Rodney what to do next. And this time he wasn't sure. He typed a moment to gather his thoughts.

"No. Sheppard tried to trigger the command to lock himself in the chair room. Maybe he broke free of whatever's controlling him temporarily. But at this point, we need to _find_ him. If Sheppard has gone into some sensor-shielded hidey hole, then maybe we can trace him to it from the transporters. Give us a minute!"

"Dr. Strai did access the transporter code several months ago under his own code," Radek said, following the trail of tampering. "I will see if I can find out what he changed."

Rodney pulled up the city's power logs. The transporters were power-hogs; if someone had tapped into the transporter system and found a way to beam someone to a room outside of a cubby, then he should see a spike in the general area. He overlayed the times that Sheppard had used the transporters and disappeared with the power distribution map, saw a spike on the West Pier and then...

"Mr. Woolsey! I just lost access to city controls."

"So did I!"

"Gate controls and communications are all offline!"

The chorus of technicians grew shrill and frightened. A low thrum rose under their feet and set tablets and coffee cups rattling. Rodney looked once around the room and pounced on his keyboard, "No, no, no, no, no!"

"What's going on? Did the city initiate lockdown automatically?" Woolsey demanded. Radek answered.

"We're not on lockdown. We're locked out. All systems have been rerouted to a remote access point. The control room, and the rest of the city for that matter, have been cut off."

"Where? Where has it been re-routed?"

"I can't tell precisely. Whoever has done this has hidden their tracks quite thoroughly. They have routed control through so many different systems, it will take some time to unsort the tangle. All I can say with certainty is that it looks to be somewhere in the -"

"West Pier. The transporter trail leads there too," Rodney put in.

The room rattled harder and the thrum rose in intensity. Rodney could feel it vibrating against the soles of his feet.

"That feels like -" Teyla began when a technician shouted, interrupting her, "Sir, the star drive is online! It is powering up to full capacity! All pre-flight systems are also engaging: inertial dampeners, shield, artificial gravity..."

Rodney blew out a hard breath, began trying anything and everything he could think of to regain control of the city or the sensors or anything. He shot only a quick, disgusted look at Lorne before devoting his full attention to the task.

"At least we know, now, why they wanted to the chair," he said.

* * *

John instinctively brought up the Heads Up Display, only surprised that it worked after it was glowing with information over his head. Whoever these aliens were, they were damn good a making things. The city lurched and the rumble grew more violent.

"The thrusters are out of sync," he murmured to himself and dug his fingers into the chair's squishy control pads to balance out the power across the city's drive. The vibrations immediately faded into a smooth hum. The second thing he did was try to turn everything off.

"Navigation and ignition are not within your control," Mo answered the unasked question when, sure enough the city continued to power up no matter what John tried. "You have access only to those systems that are required to pilot within the atmosphere - thruster control and power compensation."

John ran through a few more commands anyway, then grudgingly concluded that Mo was correct: the only thing he was able to affect was thrusters and power. And Mo was also right that that needed a pilot's touch - or a really good autopilot, which Rodney hadn't figured out how to initialize yet. It took finesse to get a bird as big as this one off the ground without flopping it over or tearing itself apart. The Ancients did "pretty" just fine, but hadn't been too keen on "practical".

"All preflight systems are online, shield is activated." Curly had returned to his slouch at his own keyboard. John confirmed the information with a glance at the HUD. Star drive was at redline, too, ready to fling the city into space where Curly could take it into hyperspace and to anywhere they wanted.

"Colonel Sheppard, you may begin your ascent."

"No."

Mo just typed loudly at his own keyboard and thruster power spiked. The city lurched, lumbering off the surface of the water briefly, and then sank into the waves with a bloated wobble. Even with shields and inertial dampeners set to full strength, John felt the motion as a sickening flop in his stomach. John bled off and throttled back the thrusters from his end as quickly as Mo could throw more power to them, and for a few, precious minutes, they were at stalemate. The city began to spin slowly as it floated, the thrust John couldn't hold back pushing the water underneath the city into random swirls and eddies. They wouldn't get it off the surface without John's cooperation, limited control or not. And there was no way in any hell they were going to get John's cooperation.

Eventually Curly figured that out. He cursed and snatched for the green crystal. "This is pointless. I told you he was not worth the effort. Prepare an imprint into the Cohall device. We will fly it that way."

John was yanked out of his body while Mo and Curly argued, but that was find with him. He was in the chair. He could just think what he needed to do. They would put a Curly-in-his-head and hope the imprint was strong enough to use John's body to fly the city - most likely ripping it apart out of inexperience, instead. John wouldn't let them get to that point. He couldn't. The HUD flashed with his thoughts, the pair of thieves too immersed in their own screens to notice. When they did - well, John was expecting it to get bad.

Several minutes passed. No wonder they usually just zapped him with an empty imprint to pacify him. Actually putting another person in here must be hard. John's anxiety grew as he waited. He was starting to feel a little claustrophobic, tied to the chair, stuck in his head, just waiting for the next kick.

"A fresh imprint has been loaded into the device," Mo finally growled, clearly disgusted with having been made to look bad. "Once it has been impressed upon the Colonel, it can control the thrusters to the best of its ability."

"Like we should have done from the start," Curly twisted the knife a little bit.

"Wait."

Mo sounded even more nervous and...pissed off. _Here it comes,_ thought John, bracing himself just a little. He wasn't looking forward to the 'slamming back into his body' part of the game. Somehow, it seemed to hurt more each time he did it.

"What now?" Curly snarled.

"Shield is down." Mo tapped at his keyboard, then turned with a look of furious shock to John. "You sapped power from the shield until it collapsed."

John could only grin inside his head.

"Get it back up!" Curly demanded.

"I can't. He has initialized some sort of access code from the chair."

Both aliens rose to stand, glowering, at John's feet. He fell into his body and couldn't suppress a long groan at the jolt, even having expected it.

"Turn on the shield."

John pretended to think about it. "Don't feel like it," he answered at last. The code he'd used wouldn't keep them blocked for long if they knew what to go looking for - it was simply a pilot's prioritization command that prevented the city's control room technicians from accessing certain systems when a pilot wanted direct control. It was meant simply as a kind of polite request along the line of 'hey, I'm using this now - y'all back off', but John was betting that Mo and Curly weren't familiar enough with all the subtleties of the city to guess what he'd done. Delay was his best strategy. Keep these guys chasing their tails until someone showed up.

Someone _would_ show up.

Wouldn't they?

_Where were they_?

In a fit of anger, Curly snatched for the piping that John had been waving around earlier and brought it against his shins on the footrest of the chair. The impact of pipe against bone and skin sent searing pain all the way up his legs and into his lower back. But John only grunted, distracted by a sudden surge of doubt so strong, he felt his whole body begin to tense.

He was sitting in a stolen control chair, missing for more than 15 hours with the city poised to launch itself and all his people into space, at the mercy of two...TWO squirrelly aliens and NO ONE HAD BOTHERED TO FIND HIM? He was in his own city, the city that was his job to protect and secure. He thought he'd done a good job. He'd been...proud of the work he did here.

Had he screwed up that badly here? Had Caldwell been right all along: He wasn't ready for a command of this magnitude. He'd been dumb lucky so far. Or he hadn't. Just last month he'd lost the most important scientist in the entire Stargate Program, Dr. Jackson - founding member of SG-1 for flips sake. He'd gotten them back. By the skin of his teeth, he'd fixed his mistake, but...in the end it was his fault they'd been lost in the first place.

Curly swung again, then flung the pipe to land with a crash against a metal shelf when John still refused to react beyond an involuntary wince at the abuse.

John's core of defiance turned into a flame of shame, ignited the by throbbing in his legs and side. He'd fix this mistake, too...or he'd go out with it. He didn't want any more second chances. He wanted to stop losing his first ones.

"I won't raise the shield." John's voice was low, resolute. "If you fly this thing, you'll die when the city leaves the atmosphere, if it doesn't fall apart from stress before then."

Curly held up the green crystal, panting hard. "You have proven that you can manipulate certain controls under the influence of the Cohall device. When it becomes clear that you must do so, you will raise the shield." His hand closed around it and John felt the familiar release of awareness. But this time, the sense of another presence with him was there - something about it felt more like Mo than Curly- and it was much stronger than before. Fear competed with his raging shame.

"Power thrusters," Curly told Mo-in-his-head with a leer that competed on the smug scale with any Wraith John had ever met. "Launch the city."

_I'll do it. I'll let the city tear itself apart before I let you have it!_ John snarled, even angrier that he could no longer speak the words.

"If you don't raise the shield, all of your filthy animal friends will die too."

Mo-in-his-head brought up the HUD and began to throttle up the power. The city began to shudder again and John fought the instinct to balance out the thrust himself. So it was to be a game of chicken? John could play that game...well. And he could also cheat. He mustered every ounce of concentration he possessed and sent as many conflicting commands to the chair as he could think of. The HUD flickered, then stabilized. The thrusters sputtered, then continued their slow-burn countdown to escape thrust. Ninety more seconds.

John tried again, and again the Mo-in-his-head smoothly countered the commands and continued the launch. John could see his fingers working the control pads.

"The stronger imprint seems to be more effective against the Colonel's efforts," Mo observed calmly.

_No! _John screamed. Thirty seconds. He wouldn't give in and turn on the shield. He wouldn't let them win. _He had to stop them, he was the only one who could._.._fix it._

With the near panic erupted a deep, hot flood of fury - triggered by a day of frustration and self-doubt, encouraged by circumstances that strangely rewarded the naturally hot anger that John had learned to keep tightly under control since he was a small, tantrum-prone, child. His arms began to twitch, then shudder, then they were jerking at the restraints that bound him to the rests with frantic yanks. _He had to stop them because he'd failed. It was his fault. His father was right. Caldwell was right. _

Curly's eyes went wide with surprise and Mo looked over in alarm. John focused all his hatred and rage on the two men responsible for proving him so utterly wrong. The surge of fury was so intense that something snapped inside his head. He could feel the imprint upon his mind get all scrambled up and a deep, painful-without-pain ache began to grow between his ears. It was panic like claustrophobia and anger like homicidal mania, but there was no outlet. He couldn't fight. He couldn't stop them. It all just stayed bottled up, building into incredible pressure.

John's body began to seize, he could see his fists clenching and unclenching. He knew his shoulders were slamming themselves against the cords around his chest. The HUD flickered, faltered, and the city tilted to an alarming angle - if the things sliding off shelves were any clue. John couldn't feel it. He only felt the desperate rage and frustration. It flooded him, filled him, consumed him. He fed it with satisfaction when the real Mo had to reduce thrust as the Mo-in-his-head lost control of the chair. The red haze clouded his sight again.

A scream of frustration bubbled out of the depths and John was shocked when he heard his body voice the howl.

"Stop him!" the real Mo yelled when the city tilted again. "He's compromising the city's structural integrity."

Curly leaped over to the shelves and out of John's sight for a moment. When he returned to the foot of the chair, he was holding a painfully familiar object - John's 9mm. _I'll kill you! I'll kill you! I'll kill you!_ John chanted, the only response to the threat he was capable of in the throes of the Cohall induced panic.

"I should have done this from the start," Curly said. "Myself."

_NO! I'll kill you, I'll stop you, I'll...stop...you..._

Curly lifted the weapon and pointed it at John's chest.


	7. Chapter 7

"Nothing. Nothing. NOTHING."

Rodney slammed his hands down on the keyboard, then shoved his chair to roll in front of an Ancient control panel. The technician working there skittered aside, muttering something about his toes.

"Can you get control back, Doctor?" Woolsey asked. Lorne, Teyla, Ronon, and Woolsey moved to stand behind him in a befuddled clump. Rodney didn't answer. He hated them watching every little move he made, like they didn't trust him. It made him nervous. Sheppard knew better than to hover. Oh, he'd prod and snap and push Rodney along, but he didn't hover. Sheppard trusted him and he was failing in that trust quite spectacularly at the moment. _What would Sheppard do?_

"Rodney, we need to find where control has been rerouted and the control chair most likely is. The fastest way to prevent the city from launching is to confront the thieves directly." Radek was still typing at his own keyboard as he spoke.

"I know that. I'm working on breaking the lockout to the power systems so we can scan for the chair. They may have shielded themselves, but that much power being drawn into one place is going to leave a trace." _Sheppard would agree, wouldn't he? He'd just be telling Rodney to do it faster._ Rodney hadn't realized before how much he'd come to depend on Sheppard. Sometimes it was just in the way he asked stupid questions that helped convince Rodney he was on the right track. Every now and then, the man would come up with something a little useful of his own. Usually just by arguing with him, Rodney would feel more confident about his own solutions. Right now, he felt like he was missing something...

"Breaking the lockout could take too long. We need to find, them."

Rodney looked away from his keyboard to find Radek studying him keenly. He seemed to be trying to communicate with his eyebrows - they kept lifting higher and higher in expectation...

"Rodney..."

And suddenly, he knew what to do. He knew what Sheppard would do - it was what his friend had been preparing his men to do for weeks. Rodney leaped to his feet and lunged towards the main large screen.

"Radek, call up schematics of the West Pier." The image was already there by the time he'd drawn his little crowd of groupies. He fixed Lorne with a steady stare. "Major, initiate a manual search of the West Pier. Probably six teams - eight if you can muster them. It's a big area, but focus your concentration on these three towers - " Rodney indicated each in turn. "The West Pier doesn't have as many buildings as some and we haven't put any of them to use. These contain the highest concentration of labs that would be capable of the systems integration they'd need. Tell the teams they are looking for Sheppard, Strai, and Kovich and the control chair. The theives probably have disabled the scanners and are running jammers. I'm sure they're barricaded in pretty good, so all locked doors are suspicious."

Lorne was nodding, his eyes growing eager as Rodney completed his instructions. Even before he finished, Lorne was reaching for his radio. "Captain Anderson, this is Lorne. Scramble the unit and initiate search pattern Delta-9er, six teams, PW, 99 by 43, 89 by 55, and 89 by 33. Code: Foothold/Thalen - Sheppard, Strai, Kovich. Go."

"That's it?" Rodney blurted, surprised the string of alphabet nonsense had taken about a tenth of the time it had taken him to explain it to Lorne.

Lorne just nodded, lifted his hand to his ear to listen for a bit, then said "First team is already there. They were in the transporter on their way to a training exercise." He turned to leave. Ronon and Teyla immediately set out after him. Rodney watched them for a second.

"Radek, keep trying to break into power and internal sensors. You can tell us where to go if you find anything."

"Us? Where are you going?"

"I'm going with them. When they find the chair, they'll need someone to shut it down and return control to the tower."

Radek was looking at him with something like pride when he replied, "Of course. Good luck."

"Luck? I'll take skill and teamwork over luck any day." He jogged after Teyla wondering why the words seemed so familiar.

When he got to the ready room, he found himself walking into yet another seething mass of chaos. Four heavily armed and geared men burst their way out of the door and jogged off at a fast trot just as Rodney reached it. Inside, another team was just putting the finishing touches on their equipment and had begun towards the exit before Rodney made it to his locker. If he was counting correctly, there were only two teams still getting ready, meaning four had geared up and headed out in the time it took him to walk down three flights of stairs.

He fumbled at his locker, realizing he'd be left behind if he didn't hurry, too.

"Catch us up, McKay," Lorne called as he left with his team and Teyla and Ronon. At just that moment, the floor under their feet rolled and Rodney's stomach dropped into his shoes. Everyone in the room braced themselves and froze, some swallowing hard, others cutting loose with a creative expletive or two. Lorne looked at the ceiling, looked at Rodney. "I want you close by when we find them."

"Ok," he called back. In the end he ran out with the very last team, still shoving his own palm scanner into his pockets. He finished clipping his holster to his thigh in the transporter, wedged between Captain Anderson and three other guys he didn't know. "You guys get dressed very fast!" he said before the flash sent them to the West Pier. The men just threw him odd looks and pushed out of the tiny cubby as fast as their gear allowed.

Rodney checked in with Lorne and spent the next few minutes watching Lorne's team race through doors then yell "CLEAR!" over and over. The city rocked and frothed up the water underneath it, but didn't lurch again. In one room with a wide bank of windows, Rodney could see the horizon drifting past as the city spun like a lazy carousel.

Because he was bored, and nervous, he pulled out his LSD detector and watched two other teams drift in and out of range for a while. Anderson's team was leapfrogging levels in the same building as Lorne's and the other was searching another building completely. It was truly remarkable how fast they were working through their sections of the grid. They didn't have to stop and look for any small objects like Sheppard had during their contest, but Rodney was certain they were not missing anything, either.

When even that got uninteresting, he reached to tap open his radio at the same moment that Zelenka's voice interrupted the eerie quiet of empty building and rumbling city.

"Rodney, we've been monitoring the star drive and flight systems. The thrusters have been behaving extremely oddly, and the shield just collapsed."

"Collapsed? Why?"

"As near as we can figure with limited access, the power to the shield was dialed down and then bled off into non-flight systems. When the levels fell below critical mass, it collapsed."

"Is power stable to the rest of the city?"

"All other flight-critical systems are still fully activated. Thruster power is currently idling below escape thrust, but otherwise..." Rodney could almost hear his shrug. "Perhaps they have realized how difficult it is to pilot this complicated a craft and are reconsidering their options."

"Seems unlikely, but keep me appraised."

"Of course."

Rodney walked the hallway for a few more minutes between the rooms Lorne's team was darting in and out of. Lorne was almost finished with this floor and was jogging towards the stairwell. Rodney was watching the scanner again, idly trying to calculate their rate of progress in "Clear!"s per minute when Anderson's team blinked off the screen. Rodney stopped to stare at the dots. Or stare at the lack of dots. Anderson had been just above them, also almost ready to enter the stairwell and head to their next assigned floor. Rodney had been imagining a little race of sorts between the two teams, wondering who would get to the stairs first when they'd simply...disappeared.

He took a deep breath for a bellow, but Anderson beat him to it.

"Major Lorne, this is Anderson, level 6. We've got a locked door and some very strange scanner readings."

"That's it!" Rodney yelled and shoved his way into the stairwell, Lorne and his people close behind. "Ronon, Teyla, join us in the 99 building, level 6. We've got something. Radek -"

"Rodney! Thrusters just powered up again."

"Shields?"

"Still down."

"Just hang on for a minute we - "

He was interrupted by a groan of stressed architecture. The floor under his feet shuddered, then tilted out from under him. He lunged for the railing, only just keeping himself from tumbling off balance and back down the smooth metal stairs. Cries of surprise and curses filled the echoing stairwell as the rest of Lorne's team were tossed about.

"Thrusters are out of alignment. Inertial dampeners are unable to compensate," Radek yelled.

"We got that!" Rodney yelled back. When the floor seemed mostly level again, Rodney lumbered the rest of the way up as fast as he could. "Just hang on," he repeated.

They burst onto the level to find Anderson already directing his men to wire up C4 around the seams of the aforementioned door. Lorne kept his team back, letting Anderson's do their job, but everyone was fidgety and kept looking at the walls around them which were groaning and shuddering harder with each passing second. Rodney alone joined the cluster at the door and ran his scanner along the seams. The control bar had been removed, the hole sealed over sloppily with a metal sheet and welder's lead. Rodney agreed that C4 was the fastest entry.

"They're using some kind of sensor jamming! I can't get any readings at all in there! There could be no one or ten people!" He had to shout over the noise of the complaining city.

The city rocked again, and Rodney was jostled against the wall with the rest of Anderson's team. Anderson gave him a knowing look.

"Understood. City maps say the room is a lab, 150 x 100. No other exits. Maybe one closet. Walker, Bennett - you're in first. Ronon, Teyla, you're welcome to go in next if you'd like the forward spot."

Rodney glanced back to see that the pair had, in fact, just raced out of the stairwell. For just a moment, a surge of confidence warmed him. He also hadn't realized how much better he felt to have his usual team nearby. Teyla and Ronon were breathing heavily, but both moved into position with nods of gratitude.

"Ready, sir," called the point man with a deep, preparatory breath. Rodney snapped his fingers nervously, then rubbed his palms together. The city shuddered under their feet, but didn't rock...this time. He'd have to shut down the star drive quickly, he thought, or those out-of-sync thrusters would tear the city apart without even trying to leave the surface.

"On three!" Anderson shouted, stepping to one side and flipping open the safety cover on his detonator. "One... Doctor, you need to move out of the way!"

"Oh! Right!" Rodney scurried behind Anderson who just rolled his eyes and continued.

"Two...three! Fire in the hole!"

A bang and a flash whited out the hallway for an instant, and then the two Marines, followed closely by Ronon and Teyla, were diving through the new hole in the wall, disappearing into the cloud of dust and smoke like phantoms. Rodney drew his own 9 mm and ran after them, earning a surprised look from Anderson. He got three steps into the room before he almost ran into a cluttered metal shelving unit. He turned to work his way around it, and then froze at the scene already unfolding.

Ronon and Teyla were stalking down the middle of the room, holding their weapons steady on Kovich and Strai. The control chair was parked on a homemade platform in the center of an unbelievably messy room. Strai was sitting at a workbench loaded with laptops and monitors. The Pakistani scientist who had always been polite and respectful to Rodney (if a bit dense and slow in completing his projects) was gaping at the strike force, his eyes disbelieving and angry. He kept looking between the chair and Kovich and the soldiers creeping towards them.

Kovich was holding a 9 mm at whoever was sitting in the control chair. The chair itself was reclined and glowing. Rodney could only see the back of it from his vantage point. Walker and Bennett were working their way down the walls of the room, also covering the two scientists with steady aim.

Anderson shoved him from behind and Rodney scuttled further to let him and the rest pass and to get a better view.

"Drop it," Ronon growled at Kovich at the same moment Rodney gasped at his first sight of the chair. Sheppard was tied with cording, hand and foot, wrapped into the chair. His friend was writhing and jerking against the restraints like he was having a seizure. Kovich's eyes darted around the room. He saw Anderson and even more soldiers enter through the blown-out hole, and his expression turned to pure disgust. He shifted his gaze back to Sheppard and tensed. Even Rodney could tell that he was going to fire - out of spite or revenge or God knows what. A jolt of pure fear froze Rodney to the floor, unable to look away, powerless to stop what was unfolding before him.

"No!" someone cried out, and only after the sound had crossed the room did Rodney realize it had come from him.

Ronon fired first. Kovich seized, his gun went off and the bullet sparked against the far wall, it's aim fouled. Kovich sank to the ground - his teeth clenched, his arm still twitching as if he were trying to fire again. There was a single, breathless moment of silence in which only the grunting and panting of Sheppard still struggling against his restraints could be heard. Bennett jogged three more steps to haul Strai out of his chair and held him firmly around the chest in an immobilizing embrace.

"Clear!" yelled Ronon, and Rodney closed his eyes. That was really his most favorite word in the whole world at the moment.

"McKay! The computers! The City" Lorne was bellowing as he brought his team in. The rumble of the city had become a whine of protest, as if the ancient ship was complaining personally about poor management.

"Right!" He holstered his gun and rushed to the row of keyboards and screens on the workbench. "Get Sheppard out of the chair," he yelled as he passed, both because he might need to use it and because he couldn't stand seeing Sheppard tied up like that. He lunged at the workstation Strai had been sitting at and began typing. "Tell me what you did, Strai," he said to the man. Strai hung limp and twitchy in Bennett's secure hold. He didn't answer.

"Never mind," Rodney added with a grin at the screen. Piece of cake - for him at least. He typed a short command, and the rattling hum of the star drive sank into a low rumble, then faded altogether. "Star drive is powered down. It'll take a bit to sort out this mess, but we're not heading into space anytime soon." Rodney made his declaration to the room at large, then turned to receive the smiles of adulation he was expecting. Instead, everyone was looking at the chair. His relieved grin faded quickly.

Teyla and Ronon were struggling to hold John still enough to cut through the many cords and zip ties holding him in place. His friend was thrashing as if they were beating him instead, and his random growls and curses seemed to indicate that he didn't recognize any of them or his surroundings. Walker shuffled his feet in nervous worry; Anderson's face had gone pale and angry.

"You must calm down, John!" Teyla was saying in a frantic murmur. "You are safe. You are among friends. We're helping!"

"No! I'll kill you!" he rasped in a hoarse whisper and continued to struggle.

"Hold his arm, Teyla, so I don't cut him," Ronon said, his voice unusually subdued.

Ronon slid his knife through the last binding around John's raw and bloodied wrists - torn from constant twisting against the sharp ties. John's arm flew away from the chair with a jerk. Teyla and Ronon both bent to grab an elbow with the intent to lift him out of it. John shot his arms up instead, catching them both in the face and sending them reeling backwards.

"John!" Teyla cried, sounding more distressed than angry or hurt.

Rodney watched dumbfounded as Sheppard leaped out of the chair. With a lunge, he flung himself at Strai and Bennett who were standing only a few feet away. Rodney flinched when John threw a fist at Strai's face. Bennett was so surprised, he dropped the doctor and jumped back, clearly caught off guard. Strai crumpled to the ground and John fell on him, beating him with savage blows to the face, chest, belly. Strai curled up and whimpered.

"Sheppard! What are you doing?!" Rodney yelled, then threw a pleading look at Bennett, but the young officer was completely dumbfounded. Sheppard was his CO after all. When John grabbed for a heavy wrench thing that was lying among the junk on the floor and raised it over his head, Rodney gasped and lunged between the wrestling men grabbing for John's arm before he could bring it down on Strai's head. "Stop, John! It's over. You're free."

The face that turned to look at him wasn't Sheppard's. It wasn't a face Rodney had ever seen on Sheppard before, at least. John's eyes were wild with fury, his lip was curled into a snarl, his nose and lip were bloody and swollen, adding to the general impression of ferocity. His whole body was trembling with angry tension. John twisted, trying to wrench out of Rodney's grasp, but Rodney held on. He added his other hand to keep him back, hoped that John wouldn't just turn the wrench on him instead. For a moment, he was looking into his friend's manic face and realized with absolute certainty that if he let go, John would kill Strai with his bare hands, right there in front of them all.

"This isn't like you, Sheppard," Rodney said softly, almost disappointed.

"He... He... They...!!" John panted the words as if in explanation and then he screamed in frustration, lunging for Strai again. Rodney's grip slipped, but suddenly Teyla and Ronon were there, adding their own strength and holding him back. John fought like a tiger.

"I'll kill you! I'll kill you!" he yelled until he was hoarse. And still he continued to curse and writhe, still trying to get to Strai. Teyla and Ronon held on with all their might. It took their combined effort just to keep him from wrenching free. For the first time since he had met John Sheppard, Rodney was afraid of him. Afraid of the raw fury he saw in John's eyes. And it made him mad, too - mad at whatever happened that had caused his usually lighthearted friend to fall into such rage.

"Stop it, John! This is not you! Please stop! You're my friend, not a killer." Rodney grabbed John's shirt collar and shook him as if by force alone he could make John recognize him. "Don't let them win. Please just stop!"

John screamed one last time, then gasped out a word with an almost painful wheeze, "Rodney!"

"Yes! It's me!" Rodney answered, hope blooming.

"Rodney. Safe? City...safe?" John panted. His struggles were growing weaker.

"Yes. Yes! I found the controls to shut down the star drive. They'd rerouted all controls to their own workstations and the chair, but since we found it...you...them...it was easy to turn off from here. It's over. We're safe. You're safe."

John squeezed his eyes shut, clutched at his head with fisted hands. He went suddenly rigid and began to shake. When he collapsed it was so sudden, Ronon almost dropped him to the floor. He snatched and caught Sheppard's head, lowered him gently the rest of the way. Sheppard curled up, clutching at his side and shuddering as if from extreme cold.

Rodney realized he was shaking himself from reaction and worry. "What was that all about?" he gasped, once it was clear that Sheppard was finally down for the count.

"He's feverish," Teyla said. She crouched, touched John's head lightly to confirm her statement, then pushed his hands away to pull up his shirts at the place. "He's been shot!" Her voice broke with concern.

"The bloody uniform," Rodney whispered to himself.

"Medical team is on the way," Ronon reassured, but his voice was also worried.

Rodney swallowed hard. The wound that Teyla had exposed looked...gross, for lack of a more medically accurate term. The two gouges were thick with blood and what looked like dead moss growing out of them. The skin around the holes was red and inflamed, his whole side was pink and splotchy - what he could see under the layers of smeared and dried blood, that is. John lay shivering and panting, completely out.

Rodney sank into the chair Strai had been sitting in. He watched Anderson's team haul the bloodied Strai and an again-conscious Kovich out of the room, presumably to the infirmary for examination. What had made _them_ go crazy and form a plot to steal the city? How did Sheppard fit in? Would Sheppard be...OK?

"Ronon, he's very ill," Teyla announced as if in answer. She kept one hand on John's pulse, the other held his shoulder in fierce comfort. Her eyes were desperate with worry. Ronon curled his lips back in frustration, then blew out a deep breath in fierce relief.

"They're here."

The medics surrounded John, their movement hasty but sure. John was lifted onto a gurney and headed towards the exit the instant he'd been wired up with monitors and a standard set of IV fluids. Teyla accompanied them without hesitation. Ronon left to join Lorne's team as they wandered through the strange room, looking at the mess and the huge collection of treasures scavenged from all over Atlantis. Rodney recognized at least three different tools that had been reported as "lost" in the last two years. A sparkle caught his eye and he leaned over with a grunt to pick up a green crystal, about the length of his palm.

"I'll be damned," he murmured to himself. He'd spent all day poking on the crystal's mate up in the Cohall lab, yesterday. "I guess Strai found a practical use for the device after all." His radio hissed in his ear, and he jumped at the interruption of the melancholy that had fallen over the room. He really wanted to go with Sheppard. He really needed to get the city back up.

"Rodney! I have broken the code protecting the power systems. We can trace power flow throughout the city now!"

Radek's voice was happy and enthusiastic. Rodney just felt tired and worried.

"Great." Rodney sighed. "Ten minutes ago, that would have really been helpful." _Even ten minutes ago was almost too late. Kovich had been about to shoot Sheppard. _Rodney was certain that had they taken even ten seconds longer, Sheppard would have been dead in the chair. "I'm at the source already. The chair is here. Give me a few minutes and then I'll start unraveling what they've done and I'll need some help."

"I'm on my way." Radek closed the channel.

Rodney scrubbed his face with both hands and rested his elbows on the table. He couldn't shake the image of John about to smash Strai's head open. He couldn't shake the feeling that he'd still been too late to save his friend from whatever had driven him to such rage. With a surge of restless energy, Rodney pushed out of the chair and crossed the room to tap Lorne on the shoulder.

"You did good, Major," he said when he had the man's attention. "Please be sure to tell your teams that their search resulted in the rescue of Colonel Sheppard and the apprehension of the thieves. I know...well, I know that Sheppard would be very proud."

"Thanks, McKay," Lorne replied, looking amused. "Think you'd be up for a rematch on the geocache hunt?"

Rodney blushed. "No. I think this...situation has proven that you're well prepared. And that Atlantis needs BOTH skilled use of technology and good-old-fashioned boots on the ground - to use Sheppard's phrase. Yes?"

"Agreed." Lorne was grinning, but his face went sober after a beat. "We're going back to the tower to check on Sheppard. Do you need anything else here?"

Rodney sighed, looked around at the mess. "A maid?" he quipped and Lorne chuckled. "I'll pull a team together to go through this stuff and figure out how to get the chair back. I'll be there when I can."

"I know you will. I...was watching Sheppard go after Strai and he pulled his swing when you got in the way. I don't know what was messing with the Colonel's head - I've never seen him lose it like that. But he recognized a friend when he saw one."

"Thanks" was all he could manage.

Radek bustled in, chattering and exclaiming happily at the nest of gadgets the thieves had collected. He plopped in front of the computers and jammed his chin into his palm. Pages of data started to scroll by. Lorne waved goodby and Rodney was left alone with Radek and a pile of junk.

"Let's get this done quickly," he snapped, taking the next stool over. "I want to go check on Sheppard, too."

"I was very saddened to hear Major Lorne's report that he was injured during his captivity. Perhaps you could take him some reading material to pass the time during his recovery," Radek said innocently. He typed a quick burst of code and added, "control has been returned to the rest of the city."

"Go ahead and delete their code completely, Radek. Yeah, Sheppard looked in pretty bad shape. I suspect Jennifer will have him drugged up for a while. But that's a good idea. I'll swing by his room and pick something up for him later."

"Something entertaining, not work related."

"Of course."

"Something the Colonel would really appreciate. That he would even...treasure, perhaps."

"Radek, why are you talking? Fix the city, please."

"You should let him keep his Spiderman comic book, Rodney."

Rodney's fingers froze, and he felt his eyes go narrow. Rodney thought of a hundred replies, each one more nasty than the last, but one look at Radek's expression shoved them back down his throat. Oh, he was going to pay for this. Radek would rue the day he decided to blackmail Rodney McKay. He opened his mouth. He shut it again and just glared. A slow smirk spread over Radek's face before he went back to studying the screens, chin once more resting on palm.

They typed in silence for several minutes. In the end, Radek couldn't stand it and chortled.

"Oh...shut up."

_a/n: now for the TLC  
_


	8. Chapter 8

With awareness came pain. John cracked opened his eyes but didn't see anything but the noise of his own body clamoring with protest upon protest. The drumbeat was loudest in his head and pounded against the back of his eyes with insistent throbbing. He stiffened, twisting against it, and heard the rustle of fabric follow the fretful movement.

"Hey there. We've been expecting you, Colonel. Nice of you to stop by for a while." The voice was soft and soothing. "You've had minor surgery to plug up the hole in your side. Took me the better part of an hour just to clean out that moss infestation growing in there. You're probably in some pain."

John twisted again and a low exhale of breath came out as a soft moan. The fuzzy blankness was starting to come into focus, though. He kept his eyes squinted against the light that impaled his brain like lances.

"I'll take that as confirmation. I'll give you something in a bit, but I want to talk for a minute. Can you tell me what day it is?"

He frowned. He didn't care what day it was. He just wanted to stop hurting. He lifted his hands to his head and rubbed his temples. There were fuzzy shapes mixed up with the bronze and green and white all around him. Another voice spoke, and he turned his head slightly.

"He's not answering because it's a stupid question," the voice said. "He was held captive for almost a day. He's been out for hours. *I* don't even know what day it is. Ask him something else, Jennifer. We won't know if the Cohall device scrambled him permanently until he says something intelligent."

"Colonel? Can you tell me your name?"

John was trying to place the voices. They were both familiar. Words skittered into his mind, then floated away on waves of pain, but one seemed to keep resurfacing.

"Rodney?"

"Oh, no. He is scrambled!"

"Rodney, he just heard you talking. Colonel, I know it seems dumb, but can you tell me your name? Your own name? We just want to see if you are remembering things after...what you've been through."

"My name?" he said.

"That will do for now."

"J... John Sheppard. Lieutenant Colonel. United States Air Force." Each word was barely more than a whisper. It hurt too much to take a deep breath.

"Oh, please stop him before he gives his serial number and the address of the local embassy."

"You want...serial number?" John asked. The fuzzy shapes were becoming more distinct through the slits he kept his eyelids open. The soothing voice belonged to the white one. It..._She_ stood close to the edge of the bed he was lying in. The other voice..._Rodney_ stood at his feet, his arms crossed.

"No, no. But I would like to know what else you remember. What is the last thing you remember?

John had to think about it. There was only now and the pain. Before that had been nothing. Before nothing had been... John gasped and curled his fingers into the sheets.

"John? Are you all right?"

He felt a small hand force itself under his, but he was too far into the memory to dredge up the name of the hand's owner. "Before. Curly & Mo. Steal the city! Fight them! Stop them!" His breath grew fast and his heart pounded. He felt angry and he didn't know why. It was if the mere memory of them had rubbed off the scab of their abuse, leaving the raw fury to ooze out again. He closed his eyes and thrashed. He was fighting near panic.

"It's OK, John. Yes, you fought them and you stopped them. Strai and Kovich are...in custody and you're safe."

"Safe? City safe?" He understood the words, but he couldn't control the agitation. His hands were fists around wads of fabric and fragile fingers.

"Yes. That's enough for now, I think. I'm going to give you something for the pain that will probably make you feel woozy and sleepy, but that's OK. You need to rest."

"Something for the pain," he whispered, latching onto the important part of that sentence. He felt as if every muscle was knotted with the effort to keep himself from writhing or...screaming. The white shape moved a little closer, reached over his head to fiddle with the silver bags and wires that surrounded him like a spiderweb around a fly. He didn't feel the medicine enter his body, but his head quickly began to feel thick and things got blurry again. The pain dulled, then numbed.

For just a moment, the sensation was just like being pulled out of his body by the Cohall device and he gave a great lurch of fear, startling his onlookers. "No!" he cried out. "No! I'll stop you!" But the drugs kept pulling at him and he sank into the fuzzy stupor, the fear calming only once there was nothing of him left to feel it.

* * *

"So...he's going to be alright? Right?"

Rodney shifted in his seat and found his foot bouncing against the floor in agitation. He was sitting close to Sheppard's bed, turned so he could watch the man's restless sleeping. Jennifer sat in another chair next to him, slumped in exhaustion. The lights around them had been dimmed, and were entirely dark directly over the bed. John rustled his covers within the deep shadow and then muttered more quiet curses. Rodney waited until he'd settled again, then turned to Jennifer, prompting her with a look.

"Well?"

Jennifer sighed, her face also in shadow. "The bullet hole took some patching up, but it will heal in time. As will the scrapes and bruises. I'm a bit worried about that plant infection in the wound. The being that...attacked...Dr. Strai claimed that it was for healing purposes only and would succumb to John's natural defenses. We've got him on massive antibiotics and anti-virals just to be safe. I'll feel better once his fever breaks, indicating he's fought it off completely."

"Well that all sounds good."

"Yeah. Pretty good."

There was another rustle, more muttering. Rodney's other foot began to bounce, too.

"Why am I sitting here watching an unconscious man sleep?" he blurted out at last. "I've still got a ton of work to do to get the chair installed back in the tower. We still can't figure out how they moved it."

"Because I want to talk to you, and I need to keep an eye on him while I do it."

"Talk...to me?" Rodney felt his face flush, half worrying-half anticipating what Jennifer might want to discuss.

"Yeah, about John."

"Oh." That hadn't been on his list of imagined topics.

"We've run some tests on the modified Cohall device that Strai and Kovich used on John - apparently several times if Zelenka has read the thing's memory chips correctly." She paused for a minute and Rodney forced himself not to correct her on her terminology. He sat up straighter instead and concentrated on keeping his leg still. At last she went on.

"The device suppresses certain neuropathways and stimulates others in order to imprint the chemical impression of a consciousness upon an existing one. The stress of that kind of interference causes the brain and body to produce stress hormones and other survival reflexes."

"And repeated use, could only generate more, and more concentrated, stress," Rodney guessed.

"Exactly. We've been monitoring John's EEG along with everything else. The long and short of it is that his brain chemistry is all out of whack at the moment."

"He IS scrambled!"

"No, Rodney. I mean, yes, but not cognitively. I just wanted you to know that he's going to be feeling pretty bad for a few days. Not physically - I mean he _will_ feel bad physically too, but: he'll be _feeling_ bad until his brain sorts itself out and gets its chemistry back on an even keel."

Rodney was quiet for a while. He had an idea why Jennifer was bringing this up, even though he immediately felt awkward about it.

"When John attacked Strai," he began softly, "it was like he was a different person. Sheppard can be really scary sometimes, but the sheer...hate on his face at that moment was disturbing. I really thought he was going to kill someone." He could see the shadow of Jennifer's head nod in agreement.

"From what little we've discovered, anger and aggression in particular are stimulated as a result of the imprinting process. Perhaps because it is closely related to the fight & flight response, or possibly because the imprint is susceptible to those particular emotions - the brain will learn to exaggerate those chemical signals to fight the imprint."

"Fight," Rodney whispered. He was suddenly certain that that was what Sheppard had been doing. He'd learned that anger would fight the control the imprint had over him. "Maybe that's why Thalen and Phoebus were so worked up with each other when they came out of their boxes."

"I suspect that is the case. Their imprints had been stored for a long time."

"So Sheppard's going to be all angry and aggressive for a few days? That shouldn't be too bad. We can, you know, stay out of his way until he stops wanting to kill everyone."

"He's going to feel angry and aggressive and not know why, Rodney. John bears a lot of responsibility and I suspect he will be very unsettled by losing control of such basic emotion as his temper. He's a man who keeps a lot held in and if he can't do that - if he lets out some of the stuff he's used to burying inside - he's going to feel embarrassed and frustrated."

Rodney looked at Jennifer's shadow and saw the glow of the dim light catch in her eyes as she talked. He was beginning to understand that not only was she a gifted doctor, she had a way of understanding the psychology of what her patients were experiencing in a way that was intuitive and...personal. She was not diagnosing Sheppard's likely response to his injuries from a textbook checklist - she was using what she observed and knew about him to understand it. Like she'd done when she'd been caring for him during those long, terrifying days of mental decline.

"So...what do we do? Guys - and especially Sheppard - don't go around talking out their feelings. If he's cranky, he's cranky. What can I do?"

"I don't know exactly. He'll probably push everyone away until he gets his equilibrium back. That may be the best thing for him. All I'm saying is - be understanding. Look for ways to help if an opportunity presents itself."

"Ok, I guess." He supposed he was glad she'd said something. If Sheppard threw a few punches in the next couple of days, Rodney would at least know why.

"Thanks."

John yelped in his sleep and Jennifer got up to check his monitors. When she patted his shoulder in an offering of comfort, he jumped at the touch, swatted the hand away and raised the other in a defensive fist. Jennifer froze, but the hands flopped to the mattress a moment later, once again limp.

"So Sheppard's going to be getting stronger AND feeling super-sized grouchy? I suppose restraints are out of the question?"

Jennifer shot him a sharp, angry look, then realized he was joking. Even Rodney knew that John's recent experience with captivity and restraints – the wide swatch of gauze wrapped around each of John's wrists providing physical proof of such – would not make for happy memory.

"Out of the question," she repeated firmly, just to make sure he _was_ kidding, he thought. "He needs rest and he needs to know that he's allowed to slip up on the stoic commander routine without alienating his friends."

"Sheppard stoic? I'd go more 'happy go lucky', or 'devil may care' –."

"Rodney."

"Too soft? How about 'heroically childish'? Pleasantly arrogant?" He stopped when Jennifer fixed that _glare_ on him that she was so good at that it frightened him a little how quickly he responded to it.

"Just be a friend, Rodney."

"Ok, ok. Be a friend. Be Sheppard's friend."

He sat for a moment longer until Jennifer finished her inspections and sat back down beside him. He thought about the night he'd wondered if John was mad at him and realized that they mostly argued and competed for fun. He wasn't sure how that would translate to sick-bed reassurance, but – as Jennifer had suggested – he'd watch for opportunities.

And it presented itself only two days later.

Rodney had spent the entire day hauling the damn control chair across 5 miles of city because it didn't fit in the transporters and didn't fit through half of the doorways and kept getting jammed in those nichey corners the Ancients loved so much. And it was heavy. By five o'clock, he was ready to pitch the thing off the nearest pier, but by then they were also too far from the water to have made it any fun.

Jennifer had come by late in the afternoon and dropped some pointed hints that Rodney needed to come by the infirmary and visit Sheppard who was apparently both conscious and as cranky as she'd predicted. Rodney was so cranky himself that when they finally heaved the thing onto its home platform in the control room, he decided that he couldn't get any more out of sorts and might as well visit before he spent the rest of the night connecting the thing.

When he walked in the Infirmary doors, the first thing he saw was Ronon sitting sentry. He looked around in confusion for a moment.

"Why are you out here?" he asked. "Sheppard's way over there."

"He doesn't want me around."

"So...why are you sitting there?"

"I'm standing watch. Lorne's taking the next shift."

"Over the infirmary? How many vandals and villains are going to try to raid the infirmary?"

Ronon just shrugged. "Sheppard's messed up. Jennifer says his brain got jolted and he's scared and angry. We're just trying to help."

"Does he know you're out here?"

"No. But we'll be here if he wants to know."

"Oh. Ok. Have fun," Rodney heard the sarcasm seep into the comment, but he found that he actually kindof understood. Ronon was being a friend, watching over Sheppard even if Sheppard hadn't asked or needed it.

The thought moderated his own agitation over the chair and he entered the darkened, gloomy shadow of John's bed in a thoughtful frame of mind. Jennifer was leaning over the bed and Rodney stopped when John snapped at her in a harsh bark, "Dammit, can't you keep them from coming at me with needles every goddammed half hour?"

"You know I can't, John. The staff are just doing their job. We need to keep a close eye on your bloodwork. We don't know what kind of effect the alien microbes are going to have and I'm not taking any chances."

"Jennifer!"

"I know you're frustrated and uncomfortable. Just hang in there."

"I want the hell out of here!"

John yelled the complaint so loudly that Rodney flinched. He wondered what Jennifer was going to say and took a step closer out of the hope that he'd get some insight on how to deal with his obviously much-more-cranky-than-Rodney friend. Jennifer didn't say anything, she just waited, patiently, looking John in the face.

He finally groaned loudly and Rodney saw him cover his face with his hands.

"I'm sorry!" John shouted, then more softly, "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. I understand."

"You've had your head yanked out of your body repeatedly by an alien with a literal green thumb, have you?"

Rodney snorted out loud and both John and Jennifer turned matching glares on him, noticing him for the first time. "What?" he said, a little nervous. "He's got a point."

John actually chuckled and Jennifer's look of surprise and gratitude was worth the price of admission.

"That's the first laugh anyone's gotten out of him all day. You can stay, Rodney. John, make him get you anything you might need."

She left and Rodney sidled closer, realizing he had nothing to say, really. Sheppard would call him on any of the usual 'how are you feeling' nonsense. And if the distant glower that had returned to John's face was any clue, there would be shouting involved.

"Hey," he said finally. He shoved his hands in his pocket, trying to peer at John's face without looking like he was peering. The bloody nose and lip had darkened into a spectacular double-shiner. The dim lighting made it look like John was wearing a black mask - "my friend, Zorro" Rodney thought, then decided not to voice the joke. "It's dark in here."

"Head hurts," John answered with a growl. He sank further into his mattress and crossed his arms over his chest. He flicked a couple of nervous glances Rodney's way, then closed his eyes, too. Rodney snapped his fingers. He shuffled his feet.

"We got the chair back into the control room, finally. I still have to install it and test the devil out of the thing to make sure those guys didn't screw anything up when they stole it, but at least it's there."

"You find that mini wraith beam thing?"

"Hmmm?"

"Never mind." John kept his eyes closed.

"Wait, what? Mini wraith beam? Are you telling me you _dematerialized_ the chair when you stole it? That's how you got it to the West Pier?"

"They were in my head, Rodney. _I_ didn't steal it." In retrospect, Rodney should have noticed the warning tones in John's voice.

"Oh, my God. You really did just put the chair in your pocket and walk out of there. How mini are we talking?"

"I TRIED TO STOP THEM. I DIDN'T STEAL IT!"

Rodney jumped at the bellow and bit his tongue around a defensive retort. John was looking away, biting his lip in frustration. Rodney instead decided to indulge in a little therapeutic narcissism. "Of course you didn't _mean_ to steal it. But I'm the one who just spent the last six hours lugging that damn thing across the city on a trolley. By hand. Uphill. In the snow. Well, not literal snow, but the environmental controls are malfunctioning in the West Tower Corridor and it was probably 40 degrees in there. Took us an hour to roll through all the flood debris, too." He leveled a finger at John's face, "You at least owe me a description of this 'mini-wraith-beam' _thing_. You've been holding out on me."

"You didn't ask!" John snapped, but his volume knob was down from a bellow. Misdirect: successful.

"De-script-ion."

"Six by four by two millimeters. Heavy. Looked like they'd stuck wraith tech onto an Ancient power module - the kind that powers the LSDs."

"Kind of brownish and lumpy?"

"Yeah."

"I'll be damned. We had no idea what that thing was. I really can't believe I just spent all day moving the chair by hand."

Rodney spent a moment thinking through all the things he could do with a mini-wraith-beam and then realized that John had gone quiet and embarrassed again. He didn't understand why. John hadn't done anything goofier than yell a little. Rodney did that all the time.

"Look," John interrupted him when Rodney took a breath to say _something_. "Thanks for coming by, but I'm really not...good company right now."

"You're never good company. Perhaps you've reached the level of adequate company from time to time, but - ."

"Rodney! Just go." John scrubbed his face again. He looked away and closed his eyes. "Just go," he repeated.

"No. It's OK, John. I know you're a little - on edge. If I'd been through half of what you got yourself into, Jennifer would have me in a padded room with a nice white jacket and -"

"Rodney, please go!"

He recognized the warning this time, and chose to ignore it. "I'm trying to say I don't mind that you're crazy right now."

"GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!" John yelled, then clenched his fists and screwed up his face at the outburst. With a heave, he flung himself onto his side, turning his back on Rodney. The maneuver was clearly a miscalculation. A hiss of pain escaped and Rodney saw him slap his hand into the side that had just got all the stitches pulled.

Rodney sagged, took a step as if to leave. And then suddenly he was darting around the bed, yanking at a chair and slamming himself down into it so close to the bed, Sheppard couldn't help but look right at him. John cracked his eyes open, still holding his side and breathing hard.

"No." Rodney announced firmly. "I'm not leaving."

For once the anger seemed to be under control - or drowned out by discomfort - and John just looked miserable. "I don't want..." he began, then squeezed his eyes tightly shut.

"You don't want anyone to see you like this," Rodney finished for him softly. "You're afraid someone will think you're weak, or less of a man."

"No, I'm afraid I'll hurt you and then have to feel guilty about it for the rest of my life," John quipped, but Rodney understood the fiction...and the truth of John's rebuttal. "Rodney -"

"Forget it. You're stuck with me." Rodney said and crossed his arms.

Perhaps better than anyone, he understood what it felt like to lose everything that made one feel...worthwhile. For him, losing his mind had been the ultimate humiliation. John's was the loss of control that could lead to the loss of respect he'd worked so hard to earn. And better than anyone, Rodney knew how much it had meant to him to have John stick by him. And besides. John would be better in a couple of days and he wouldn't have to worry about it anymore.

John was looking at him. Rodney kind of wished Jennifer were around watching him be such a good friend.

"I DON'T NEED YOUR GODDAM PITY, McKAY! AND I DON'T NEED YOU HOVERING!"

Rodney jumped and scooted his chair backwards a good three inches at the volume and venom in John's voice. _What happened to "You're a good friend, Rodney"?_ he thought. Had he been completely wrong? Was the whole 'friend' thing just some kind of burden on John's part and he didn't want any friendship in return?

Rodney was still frozen in shock when John snorted. And then he chuckled. And then he was laughing so hard, he had to grab for a pillow to press into his stomach and gasp to try to stop it. Rodney slumped and dropped his chin on his chest.

"Very funny, Sheppard."

"Yeah. It was," he gasped, then chortled again. Rodney twirled his finger, waiting it out. Brain chemistry indeed. Out of respect for John's "condition" he didn't accuse Sheppard of giggling like a girl.

"You finished?"

"Pretty much. Hurts too much to do it again." He wiped tears of mirth out of his eyes, then groaned as a last chuckle proved himself correct.

"Serves you right," Rodney groused, but he was grinning. John closed his eyes again, this time out of exhaustion. He was so still for so long, Rodney found his leg bouncing and he looked at his watch. He really wanted to go get started on the chair...and look for that mini-beam. John cracked one eye open.

"You can go now, Rodney."

"Oh, good!" he jumped to his feet and was almost to the foot of the bed when he spun back and sputtered out what he hoped sounded like a sincere, "Get well soon, Sheppard. I'll check on you later."

"Thanks," John said softly then chuckled again. "You should have seen your face," he said.


	9. Epilogue

John took slow, careful steps, breathing deliberately between each footfall. He knew he was pushing it, so soon after Jennifer had let him out of her clutches, but Rodney's room wasn't that far from his. At least it didn't seem that far when he wasn't full of stitches. His side twinged and he felt sweat pop out on his forehead from the effort. A little flare of annoyance at his own weakness fluttered in his chest, but he easily squashed it. And today it_ was_ easy to squash. He was just looking forward to when he didn't have to.

Rodney's door loomed before him and he rang the chime. He knew Rodney was home, he'd pestered Zelenka to check for him before he set out. The door swished open and John grinned at Rodney's look of surprise.

"Oh, hi!" He quickly stepped aside and gestured John in, to John's great relief. He really wanted to sit down for a minute. "I didn't know you were out and about," Rodney added as John lowered himself into the nearest chair, which happened to be at Rodney's desk.

"This afternoon. Jennifer sentenced me to house arrest."

"So then...?" Rodney waved his arms at his own room.

"I escaped."

"Then I have something for you, but you're early. I'm not quite finished."

"Ok."

Rodney scuttled back to another, waist-high workbench that was covered with tools and brightly colored pieces of plastic. John couldn't see well enough to figure out what it was.

"So, I finally got the story on Strai and Kovich. Can't say I'm that heartbroken that the plant things both died getting them out. I'm sure Kovich was a nice guy before Curly got him, though. Is Strai still hanging in there?"

"Yeah," Rodney answered without turning back around. "Jennifer isn't sure how fully he's going to recover, but he hadn't been infested as long as Kovich so he hadn't been...eaten on as long." John shuddered

"Did you ever find out anything more about them? Where they came from? Why they were such assholes?"

"The one inside Strai -"

"Mo."

"Right. Wait really? You named the Curly and Mo? Anyway, the one inside Strai just said that "these manifestations of their consciousnesses were wiling to sacrifice themselves for the good of their kind." Kind of arrogant, that one."

"You have no idea."

"Although, we kill plants all the time without thinking about it."

"Oh, please..."

"No, really. Think about it: we do everything from eat them to harvest them for medicines and beauty products and never think about the face that we are destroying a living thing."

"They're _plants_ Rodney."

"Curly and Mo thought of us as just _animals_."

"I'm done with this conversation." John didn't like hypothetical arguments expressing sympathy for the bad guy with someone who hadn't been shot by one. "What are you building."

"Wait for it."

John sighed, then fidgeted. His tender side was talking to him about the long walk, and even he could admit that his endurance was down a bit. But aches and pains aside, he felt better at that moment than he had in...weeks really. Rodney clattered at his table, then turned with a flourish, brandishing two large, brightly colored objects.

"Ta-daa!" he announced, and hurried over - once he realized John wasn't going to jump up and join him. They were cars. Toy cars?

"Remote control race cars!" Rodney said happily, holding out the yellow one. John reached out instead and grabbed the red one out of his other hand and began to turn it over.

"This is so cool!" John exclaimed, flipping the wheels and watching them spin. Rodney sighed and tucked his yellow one under his arm.

"I got them from Lt. Feder. He had them shipped in on the last Deadalus run to put in the PX, but I got them off him before they even went on sale. We can race!"

"You're on!" John exclaimed, even happier still. He pushed himself to his feet and wobbled a little - enough to have to grab for Rodney's arm. Rodney clucked at him.

"Not now...there's more." He crossed the room again and brought John a little case of tools. "I knew you'd be taking it easy for a few more days so here -" he shoved the tools at John who, juggling both car and case, was forced to sit down again, " - you can borrow these for your modifications."

John's eyebrows went up, his voice went sly, "Modifications?"

"Yes. You and me, two weeks, East Pier corridor. Anything goes."

"Anything?"

"Anything that won't blow the city up, that is."

"You're on. Thanks, Rodney. This is...great. Really great." He didn't know what else to say. It was a perfect get-well gift: something to keep him busy, to look forward to, and to play with all at the same time. He dug in his shirt and pulled out the item he'd brought.

"Here, I have something for you, too." He pulled out a carefully smooth, plastic covered booklet and handed it over.

"Spiderman!" Rodney exclaimed, his eyes shining with avarice. He tugged it out of the cover and John forced himself not to wince as Rodney looked on the verge of bending the pages open right on the spot. But before he could so much as ruin a single page, he began stuffing it back into the plastic and shoved it back at John.

"No. No, you keep it."

"Excuse me?" John said, puzzled. He'd been wondering for days why Rodney hadn't been badgering him about it.

"It's just that... I really think... I didn't really want..."

Rodney was sputtering and turning eight shades of red. John just left him hanging, trying really hard suppress the smirk that was about to escape. With a final, violent thrust, Rodney shoved the comic book into John's chest (forcing him to snatch it before it got crumpled) and blurted out in a breathless rush.

"You keep it because it was a stupid contest and your guys did really well and you shouldn't have bet something that means so much to you that it would only make me feel guilty for taking it and I cheated." Rodney crossed his arms and thrust his chin in the air, as if daring John to react.

"You cheated?!" John exclaimed, getting to the heart of the matter.

"Yeah!" Rodney blew out a deep sigh. He sat on his bed with a plop. "I programmed the automated pathogen and intruder sensors to record transponder signatures and then kept a log for a week before the race. Corrigan was bragging about finding the cache at lunch the day before so I checked the logs and kindof...sortof...followed his signature to the cache. It was obvious when he went out to the flooded sections of the South Pier."

"So you already knew where the cache was before we even started?" John let a little bite slip into his tone. Rodney just looked miserable.

"I didn't look closely enough to find out what room Corrigan had gone to. I still had to do detailed scans to find the exact coordinates, and I still had to use the calcium carbonate to isolate the exact spot. But I sort of, kind of had a really good place to start."

John glared for a long moment, letting Rodney stew. When he seemed repentant enough, John cocked an eyebrow. "I know."

Rodney jerked his head up. "What?"

"I knew you cheated. That you had a head start."

"You knew? Before the race? And you did it anyway?"

John shrugged. "I still thought we could win."

"Really?"

"And we almost did, too. I was pissed at first, but...my guys really needed to get that technique down. If we did lose, it would motivate them to practice. If we won, I was going to tell them you cheated and let them gloat." He looked at his hands, remembering the smashed shell. "I was pissed we lost not because you cheated, but because I didn't think I'd pushed them hard enough, or that the plan was good enough."

"It's a good plan, John," Rodney said softly. "You were right, too. Without sensors, it did the job I couldn't. Your guys found that nest of a hidey hole in record time. You should have seen them chew through that building."

"Yeah." John appreciated the praise on his guys' behalf. "Lorne's been bragging on them for a week. They deserve it. And I hear that cheat of yours helped out a little too. So...all's well that ends well." He held up the comic, laid it carefully down on Rodney's desk.

"You keep it. I'm beat. Bring the car by later, will you? Balance is still shaky and as stupid as it seems, I'm not up to carrying it back tonight."

John rose and Rodney hovered as he walked slowly to the door. He'd make it home, but would probably pay in fatigue and aches for the stubbornness. Rodney stood in his door, hands in his pockets, watching as John worked his way back down the hall. He had almost made it to the first bend when Rodney jerked off the door frame and suddenly yelled after him.

"Hey! Wait a minute. How did you find out I cheated?"

John just kept walking.

"No, seriously. Did you figure it out or did someone squeal?"

He was almost around the corner.

"John!"

"Goodnight, Rodney!" he bellowed back, and walked out of sight.

_A/N: Thanks to the whumpers for the prompt, and to everyone else who went along for the ride. I apparently whumped about everyone in chapter 7, so those of you who did make it this far, Thanks! _


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